New York Times Does A Hit Piece On… Cindy McCain? The Anatomy Of A Hit Piece.

The New York Times did a long profile of Cindy McCain and it was not flattering, but it was not overly agressive either.  The negativity was more subtle…  and totally uneccessary.

This article is a perfect example of the how subtle hit pieces can be.  I will walk through the article to show how the insidious negativity sneaks into the article, posing as objective commentary.

The article paints Cindy McCain as a weak and depressed person, uncomfortable with the political scene, that needs approval and reassurance.

It starts out with a story about when Cindy first arrived in Washington and attended her first political function.  The name tag given to her had the name of John’s first wife, Carol.  The NYT paints a story of Cindy being meek and slinking off to table off to the side, hiding out and  being ignored by those around her.  The NYT insinuates that events like this led Cindy to run back home from DC, feelings hurt.

Cindy McCain was new to Washington and not yet 30 when she arrived at a luncheon for Congressional spouses to discover a problem with her name tag.

It read “Carol McCain.” That was the well-liked wife John McCain had left to marry Cindy, to the disapproval of many in Washington.

Fearing that the slight was intentional, she slinked to a half-empty table that never filled. “No one wanted to sit at her table,“ said Barbara Ross, a friend who was not surprised when Mrs. McCain announced a few months later that she was moving back to Arizona. “It was like high school.”

Instead of telling a story about the events like they happened, the New York Times instead projects weakness on Cindy.  They make it sound as if she was a nerdy teenager, unsure of herself, whose self-conciousness was compounded by DC and that she ran back home all butt hurt, tears in her eyes.

The truth of it is that John’s first wife was very well liked in DC, and it is very probable that instances like the name tag being in the first wife’s name were intentional slights, especially considering how people treated her socially.  She was ignored, rejected, and treated rather shabbily by a great many people.  And Cindy grew tired of that and the constant parade of DC functions and functionaries.  Cindy preferred to be more productive and active than ornamental.  So she left DC to pursue her own life.

Then they get into the general theme of her life… 

From the start, Mrs. McCain’s marriage has been defined by her husband’s ambitions, and despite her sometimes punishing ride in political life, she does whatever she must to help fulfill them.

They make it sound like she is a Pasty Cline type that is some sort of Stepford Wife at her husbands beck and call. 

Nothing could be further than the truth.

Cindy McCain has a life all her own and is an incredible woman.  She does everything from help in third world relief efforts and travelling to the most needy parts of the planet to lend a hand, to drift racing cars.  And I suspect she would be doing many of the same things even if she were not married to John.

This is one of the reasons she left DC, as I said above.  She and John are best friends and partners.  She is not some sexist image of a beaten down 50s housewife that is completely deferential to her husband.  She has her own life too.

Then they quip off with these little tibits…  some of which they explain later and some of which they do not.

She played a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and just as her husband was rehabilitating his reputation, she was caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers. She has a fortune that sets the McCains apart from most other Americans, a problem in a presidential race that hinges on economic anxieties. She can be imprecise: she has repeatedly called herself an only child, for instance, even though she has two half-siblings, and has provided varying details about a 1994 mercy mission to Rwanda.

That sort of rollout of basically factual information without any context makes the situation look much worse than it really is.

The “role” in the Keating scandal was this…  Keating owned the largest savings and loan in Arizona.  Cindy and her father, who ran their finances completely independently of John (the father has since passed, but Cindy continues to manage her own finances independently), invested in a shopping center.  Keating, the biggest banker around, was also involved in the deal.

Keeping in mind that John was found to have done nothing wrong, the fact that Cindy and her father (large business and real estate investors), and that Keating was the biggest banker around…  this is ridiculous…  but the article doesn’t bring any of this up.  It leaves out the details of the situation in the explanation later in the article that would minimize any negativity, and I suspect it is done on purpose to make the goings on much more sinister.

As far as calling herself an only child…  the article completely fails to explain any of this.  She was essentially raised as an only child.  She does have two half-siblings, but did not grow up with them and had VERY VERY VERY little contact with them.  They are essentially strangers.  The fact that she has siblings is basically a technicality and that is about it. 

Because there is no explanation, the article instead makes it seem as if she is hiding something, especially considering the context of the rest of the quote…  like varying stories of her relief efforts in Rwanda…  pfft.  Ridiculous.  There are photojournals and plenty of third party accounts of her time there…  and hell, did either one of those reporters volunteer to help care for the refugees in the camps in central Africa? 

No? 

Then they need a big glass of STFU.

So then we get into the more slimey stuff that dimishes her charity work…

Those close to Mrs. McCain say she aspires to be like another blonde, glamorous figure married to an older man: Diana, the Princess of Wales. Mrs. McCain sought out the same mine-clearing organization that the princess supported, joining its board and traveling to minefields, just as her role model had.

Ok, so Cindy wants to be a Diana’s doppleganger?  A mere copycat without an original idea?  Because, though you may not realize it up front, that is the underlying psychological message of this sentence.

The fact is that she respects Diana’s work immensely…  we all do.  Who the hell wouldn’t?  Why would her joining the mine-clearing organization have to only been done in an attempt to copy Diana?  Why couldn’t she just have heard of the organization because of Diana’s involvement, thought it was a wonderful organization and joined it for those reasons?

No…  that could not be the reason, the article leads us to conclude.  She is a weak and unsure person that is trying to be like Diana, her teenage idol.

And so the article goes…  giving heavy or incomplete descriptions of the negatives, giving a not-so-great slant or worse to the average, and barely a nod to the wonderful things.

As I said, there is nothing overtly bad or wrong about the article…  it is the choice of context and wording that makes this a hit piece.

And for those that think that I am reading too much into this or that I am “paranoid,” think of it this way…

A journalist is a professional writer whose job it is to tell a story.  Words, phrasing and context are essential elements of their JOB.  And the people that write for the New York Times are superlative writers…  among the best story tellers of them all.

And the story of these people tell does not leave you with the impression of a woman that has fought adversity, had an amazing recovery from a stroke, done amazing chairty work, is incredibly dynamic, warm, funny, personable and adventurous…  it leaves you with a picture of a weak, scared, lonely, self doubting and less than truthful housewife that lives in seclusion in the shadow of her husband.

And that is intentional.

Shame on you New York Times.  Shame on you.

The Inside Scoop On How Polling Works

This is from a post on Insight Analytical (a favorite of mine) called “Musings on Pollsters:  Confessions of a Former Gallup Study Director.” 

I highly suggest you follow the link to read the whole thing, it is amazingly informative, but here is a bit to get you started.  You will get the inside scoop on both Gallup and Zogby, two of the largest and most “reliable” polling companies in the US, as well as some tips on how to tell a good poll from a bad.

In between these two jobs I worked at The Gallup Organization in Princeton, NJ. This was way back when the founder, George Gallup, Sr., was still roaming the halls. Phone interviewing there was in its infancy. The main source of general survey data was the “omnibus” Gallup survey which was conducted IN PERSON. Appointments were arranged with respondents and pages of questions from various clients were asked, as well as the presidential preference questions that Gallup included for its poll. Of course, as time went on and fewer people were at home, even Gallup was forced to do more phone surveys.

At Gallup, many of the project directors had advanced degrees and there was an “academic” feel to the place. There was a great deal of pride in doing good work. It was at Gallup that I learned how to create a series of questions, figure the statistical significance of results and how to write a report from data. As a study director I also fielded studies and supervised people who recruited interviewees for studies like the infamous microwave oven evaluation, where ovens being sent out for the California part of a study which had begun in Princeton wound up in Japan instead of San Francisco. Luckily, I had an ace field specialist who was able to rearrange the interview schedules and make up the lost time after the ovens finally arrived back in California! And I personally had to make sure we had the correct pool of respondents in terms of demographics and experience even as we were really pressed to refield the study.

At Gallup, there was never any question of altering a survey or slanting the data because of client pressure once the study was designed (with client requirements considered) and finally fielded. Furthermore, Gallup did not undertake any polling from special interests groups, such as the Democratic or Republican parties, other politcal groups, or any organizations with a particular agenda. INDEPENDENCE was the hallmark of The Gallup Organization. In addition, the man who sat in the small office down the hall and designed the sampling criteria was an ex-Marine who was a stickler about sampling. Gallup was not to be messed with! And Andy Kohut, who was President of Gallup when I was there and later went on to run Pew, was someone else who was a great teacher and took the business of polling seriously.

(For an absolutely fascinating history of how Gallup became the “world’s pollster,” check out this story which describes the early years of Gallup and how he learned the hard way after being wrong about the Dewey-Truman outcome that “Lesson No. 1 was to keep polling, right up to Election Day.”)

Of course, “my” Gallup no longer exists….

Gallup: Likely Voters – Obama 49, McCain 47!!!

Gallup

The “traditional” likely voter model, which Gallup has employed for past elections, factors in prior voting behavior as well as current voting intention. This has generally shown a closer contest, reflecting the fact that Republicans have typically been more likely to vote than Democrats in previous elections. Today’s results show Obama with a two-point advantage over McCain using this likely voter model, 49% to 47%, this is within the poll’s margin of error.

The Final Debate… My Verdict And A Poll

McCain Won.  Hands Down.

He was weak on Healthcare, but whipped Obama’s ass on everything else.

And how friggin difficult would it have been for Obama just to admit that John McCain is not a racist and is nothing like Gov Wallace?

Horrible.

Best line of the night…  “I am not President Bush.  If you wanted to run against him, you should have run 4 years ago.”

Greatness.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Yahoo – “Among respondents not identified with either major political party, McCain was judged tonight’s winner, 51-42 percent.”

Nice!

McCain sowing seeds of hate?

This is an opinion piece by Betty Jean King originally posted at Free-Me-Now.

What’s this I hear; Obama supporters are complaining that McCain supporters are getting a little testy with them? Well it’s about time! Just like their illustrious leader they are bullies- when you stand up to a bully they go running home crying because somebody stood up to them! All I can say is – they ought not to have started something they were not tough enough to finish.

There are angry and ready to rumble Mc Cain supporters out there and I could easily become one of them. I am being driven toward it – propelled daily by the hate mongering Obama supporters who have for 2 years antagonized, bashed, battered and harassed us. They have laughed in our faces believing they have this in the bag, thinking their party can not possibly lose. They have this ace – errrr – race card up their sleeve and it seems to trump all other cards. And up to now it seems to have worked.

They have called us racists, have intimidated us and now are trying to steal this election and our very democracy from us. Just today on the street I was accused of being a racist simply for having a sign that read “Democrat for McCain” and my friend was called a racist, her sign read “Women for McCain and Palin”

Do they take us for fools? Do they think we have short memories? Do they think our women are that short sighted, that they have no dignity or pride? Do they think our men have no dignity and or pride in their wives, mothers or daughters?

Yes there are hate mongering supporters, but it is not something that John McCain started this week as the main stream media and the Obama camp would have you believe. No No No – this angry angst that you are witnessing from McCain supporters is the result of frustration these American citizens feel as they watch their democracy slip through their fingers while the media blindly reports racism where none exists and allows blatant sexism to rage on unchecked.

Every time Obama is questioned – about anything – it’s a lynching according to the Obamabots, the pundits and bought and paid for media stooges. This has been going on since Obama entered his name into the race. No one has been able to ask him anything about anything. First Hillary and now Sarah have been treated in the most despicable way imaginable. How can we go out into this world preaching against sexism, women’s rights and human rights when we are the worst offenders? Any country that allows their women to be humiliated in this fashion has absolutely no standing to preach to any other country regarding women’s rights.

Congressman Lewis claims McCain and Palin are sewing the seeds of hate in their supporters? Has he seen and heard Obama supporters? In Philly the people on the streets wore derogatory shirts and yelled ’stone’ her! I believe that amounts to a threat on her life! At a hockey game televised worldwide she was booed – how classy! Obama supporters have been very effective at crashing Hillary meetings over the past 18 months causing disruptions. I’ve been assaulted therein myself and now they do the same to Sarah. Congressman, your bias is showing.

Mr. Lewis if you missed that, are you aware of the Obama Celebs- they are notorious. Jay Z; Ludacris; Madonna, Sandra Bernhard: Obama Supporter Threatens Sarah Palin With Gang Rape is that acceptable to you? Read about that here and I expect your comments on these supporters forthcoming sir.

In a country where racism is not tolerated we apparently not only tolerate sexism we make it into a thriving business! Congressman Lewis before you start accusing McCain and Palin of anything at this late stage maybe you should have spoken up about 2 years ago when Obama, his campaign or the party or the media or anyone for that matter did not stop his supporters from what they did to Hillary and are now doing to Sarah. Where is your outrage about this you damned hypocrite? Or don’t white girls’ have civil rights that matter to you?

Let’s hear from you Congressman Lewis. Let’s hear from you Al Sharpton, Let’s hear from the rest of you screaming civil rights leaders. Women’s Rights are Human Rights aren’t they? Human Rights are Civil Rights aren’t they? Damned Hypocrites!

Tell me folks- what pictures, signs and shirt have you seen on the streets that cry racism? Have you actually seen anything or is it just race baiting instead? Let me show you what blatant looks like so you can recognize PURE damned SEXISM – not innuendo- not maybe- not my imagination – not my hysteria- not coincidence. Damn it -let me show you just a hint- not a lot just a hint of what I have seen on the streets for nearly two years that clearly cries Sexism.

Let’s look at yet another form of blatant Sexism. Think about how they are trotting Hillary out all over the country not to pay down her own campaign debt but to raise money for Obama- yes Obama – her abuser and the highest money raiser in history . Sounds like they really want to stick it to us doesn’t it? Go out and raise money for the man and the party that abused you – beat you and cheated on you and do it with a smile honey!

Still feel like a Democrat? Still want to leave that Top of the ticket empty rather than vote against our beloved party do we? Sure go right ahead – help the Dems! They are really more on your side then Sarah Palin aren’t they? She’s gonna set you further back than that? Keep dreaming ladies – by my account ain’t nobody going set us further back than that. I will do everything in my power to stop the party and the man that did this to Her and to every woman who ever marched so that we could have the right to vote against the Democratic party on November 4th in protest for the way they treat women in America 160 years after our ancestors first stood up against these dirty bastards so that we would have a leg to stand upon now.

Grow up- take your place as a woman and finish the job our mothers and their mothers before them started- damn it!

Update: Some of the worst accusations about McCain/Palin “sowing” the seeds of hate not true.  Secret Service says “Kill Him” comment from Palin rally crowd never happened.

John Lewis And His Disgusting Comments.

In a follow up to my post about the baseless accusations of racism on the part of Palin, Rep. John Lewis has made comments that indicates that he has lost his damn mind.

From CBS

Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement, says the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign reminds him of the hateful atmosphere that segregationist Gov. George Wallace fostered in Alabama in the 1960s.

Republican candidate John McCain on Saturday called Lewis’ remarks “shocking and beyond the pale.”

In a statement issued Saturday, Lewis said McCain and running mate Sarah Palin were “sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.” He noted that Wallace also ran for president.

“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights,” said Lewis, who is black. “Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”

One of the seminal events of the civil rights movement was the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963. Four black girls died in the blast, which was linked to a Ku Klux Klan group.

Seriously?

This is getting out of control.

.

Big apologies required.

John McCain’s Letter Of Warning Re: Fannie And Freddie

Looks like he pretty much called it exactly like it happened….

That’s what I call judgement.

Props to Sweetness And Light

United States Senate
WASHINGTON, DC 20510
May 5, 2006

The Honorable William H. Frist, MD Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Richard C. Shelby
Chairman, Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Majority Leader Frist and Chairman Shelby,

We are concerned that if effective regulatory reform legislation for the housing-finance government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to.be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. Therefore, we offer you our support in bringing the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act (S. 190) to the floor and allowing the Senate to debate the merits of this bill, which was passed by the Senate Banking Committee.

Congress chartered Fannie and Freddie to provide access to home financing by maintaining liquidity in the secondary mortgage market. Today, almost half of all mortgages in the U.S. are owned or guaranteed by these GSEs. They are mammoth financial institutions with almost $1.5 Trillion of debt outstanding between them. With the fiscal challenges facing us today (deficits, entitlements, pensions and flood insurance), Congress must ask itself who would actually pay this debt if Fannie or Freddie could not?

Substantial testimony calling for improved regulation of the GSEs has been provided to the Senate by the Treasury, Federal Reserve, HUD, GAO, CBO, and others. Congress has the opportunity to recommit itself to the housing mission of the GSEs while at the same time making sure the GSEs operate in a manner that does not expose our financial system, or taxpayers, to unnecessary risk. It is vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that these institutions benefit from strong and independent regulatory supervision, operate in a safe and sound manner, and are primarily focused on their statutory mission. More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event either GSE should fail. We strongly support an effort to schedule floor time this year to debate GSE regulatory reform.

Sincerely,

(signed)

John McCain

100 Ambassadors Endorse John McCain and Sarah Palin

JohnMcCain

ARLINGTON, VA — McCain-Palin 2008 today announced that more than 100 former U.S. ambassadors are endorsing Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin for president and vice president.

Prominent former U.S. ambassadors endorsing the McCain-Palin ticket include former Ambassador to Japan, Senate Majority Leader and White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker; President George H. W. Bush, former Ambassador to the United Nations; former Ambassador to Yugoslavia and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger; former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton; former Secretary of Defense and former Ambassador to Portugal, Frank Carlucci III; former Ambassador to the Vatican and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson; and Ambassadors Richard Burt (Germany), Bruce Gelb (Belgium), Margaret Heckler (Ireland), John L. Loeb (Denmark), Ed Ney (Canada) and Julia Chang Bloch (Nepal), the first U.S. ambassador of Asian descent.

Democrat Mark W. Erwin, a former Hillary Clinton supporter and an ambassador during the Clinton administration, is co-chair of the group. “I will vote for John McCain because the differences between the two candidates are so vast and profound,” he said.

“Senator Obama does not have sufficient leadership experience, nor has he been tested in difficult times,” Erwin said in his endorsement.

Other co-chairmen of the group called “Former U.S. Ambassadors for McCain/Palin” are former U.S. Ambassador to Sweden Gregory J. Newell and former Ambassador Gilbert A. Robinson, both of whom served in the Reagan administration. Newell also served as an assistant to President Gerald Ford and as Assistant Secretary of State. Robinson was special adviser to Secretary of State George Shultz, Director of the Office of Public Diplomacy and Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency.

“Nobody could ask for a greater show of confidence,” Sen. McCain commented. “These former ambassadors are outstanding men and women who have served their country in foreign lands with great distinction and devotion to the values we all hold dear. They have a deep knowledge of the challenges facing this country abroad as well as at home. I am honored by their endorsement.”

Ambassador Robinson added, “The endorsements from this country’s most experienced foreign affairs experts are still pouring in. This demonstrates the overwhelming admiration and respect they have for John McCain’s leadership and the confidence they have in the historic McCain-Palin ticket.”

FORMER U.S. AMBASSADORS FOR MCCAIN-PALIN

Weston Adams, Malawi — Columbia, S.C.

Lenore Annenberg, Chief of Protocol — Radnor, Penn.

Cresencio Arcos, Jr., Honduras; FP/NS — Coral Gables, Fla.

George Argyros, Spain and Andorra — Costa Mesa, Calif.

Catherine Todd Bailey, Latvia — Louisville, Ky.

Howard H. Baker, Jr., Senator (R-TN); Senate Majority Leader; Amb. Japan — Huntsville, Tenn.

Douglas H. Barclay, El Salvador — Pulaski, N.Y.

Stuart A. Bernstein, Denmark — Washington, D.C.

Guest Blogger: Shtuey of Oh My Valve!

I must thank my dear friend Shtuey for seeing the bigger picture for all of us. And I must say thank you for helping me recover some of my memories of Denver. Shtuey you are my hero!

From Shtuey, our guest for the day:

At the outset I must thank Ms Placed Democrat’s Renaissancelady 48 and Eastan McNeal at No Quarter for their exhaustive research, love of country, and wise council.

How did we get here? How is it that “subprime mortgages” have brought us to the brink of economic collapse? Most people believe it is due to the predatory lending practices of financial institutions. That is the lie you have been sold. The truth is far more insidious. We are in fact on the brink of economic disaster because of the people who have sent Barack Obama.

In order to understand how this happened we must begin with Saul Alinsky , the radical socialist who, after spending a great deal of time with the Al Capone crime family in Chicago, realized that the same shakedown tactics used by the mob to extort business, and control politicians, could be used by activists to shakedown banks and political institutions to advance a socialist agenda. These were tactics utilized by groups like ACORN, in an effort to lobby the government to pass laws that forced lending institutions to issue mortgages to low income/”at risk” borrowers who often had no way of paying the money back.

But ACORN members probably did not lobby for these laws to bring down our economy, at least not knowingly. I believe that, apart from the leaders at the top, rank and file ACORN members legitimately believed they were fighting for low-income housing. But ACORN’s backers were simply using Alinsky’s method (never reveal your real agenda) to serve their own purposes. Who are these people? You know the names of two of them: Bill Ayers and Barack Obama. I suspect that they are more front men than anything else, though who knows who Ayers was with while he was in hiding?

Where did ACORN get the funds to engage in the widespread lobbying (read extortion) that allowed them to shakedown lenders and politicians? From the money diverted to them by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the Woods Fund, as well as with your tax dollars allocated by Congressional Democrats; the same Congressional Democrats that have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Freddie and Fannie in the form of campaign contributions; the same Congressional Democrats that ignored Republican calls for the regulating and reform of Freddie and Fannie–the institutions that took subprime mortgages, bundled them, and infected financial institutions worldwide…all in the name of granting minorities and low income families access to housing (always the trouble begins with the most honorable of intentions, or at least it is made to seem so), but with the Leftists’ hidden purpose of initiating a worldwide economic collapse. All of it accomplished with ACORN as the muscle.

The root of the problem lies with the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA was passed in 1977 and, according to Thomas J. DiLorenzo,

“compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call “communities of color” that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria.”

DiLorenzo goes on to explain:

The original lobbyists for the CRA were the hardcore leftists who supported the Carter administration and were often rewarded for their support with government grants and programs like the CRA that they benefited from. These included various “neighborhood organizations,” as they like to call themselves, such as “ACORN” (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). These organizations claim that over $1 trillion in CRA loans have been made, although no one seems to know the magnitude with much certainty. A U.S. Senate Banking Committee staffer told me about ten years ago that at least $100 billion in such loans had been made in the first twenty years of the Act.

So-called “community groups” like ACORN benefit themselves from the CRA through a process that sounds like legalized extortion. The CRA is enforced by four federal government bureaucracies: the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The law is set up so that any bank merger, branch expansion, or new branch creation can be postponed or prohibited by any of these four bureaucracies if a CRA “protest” is issued by a “community group.” This can cost banks great sums of money, and the “community groups” understand this perfectly well. It is their leverage. They use this leverage to get the banks to give them millions of dollars as well as promising to make a certain amount of bad loans in their communities.

A man named Bruce Marks became quite notorious during the last decade for pressuring banks to earmark literally billions of dollars to his organization, the “Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.” He once boasted to the New York Times that he had “won” loan commitments totaling $3.8 billion from Bank of America, First Union Corporation, and the Fleet Financial Group. And that is just one “community group” operating in one city – Boston.

Banks have been placed in a Catch 22 situation by the CRA: If they comply, they know they will have to suffer from more loan defaults. If they don’t comply, they face financial penalties and, worse yet, their business plans for mergers, branch expansions, etc. can be blocked by CRA protesters, which can cost a large corporation like Bank of America billions of dollars. Like most businesses, they have largely buckled under and have surrendered to their bureaucratic masters.

Consequently, banks in every community in America have been forced to hold a portfolio of bad loans, euphemistically referred to as “subprime” loans. In order to compensate themselves for the added risk of extending these loans, many lenders have increased the lending fees associated with mortgage loans. This is simply an indirect way of doing what banks always do – and what they must do to remain solvent: charging effectively higher rates of interest on riskier loans.

But this is discriminatory!, complained the “community organizations.” Thus, if one browses the ACORN web site, one can read of their boasts of having “predatory lending laws” passed in numerous states which outlaw such fees, prohibiting banks from protecting themselves from the added risk involved in making forced loans to “subprime” borrowers.

Analysis Of “The McCain Housing Plan”

I will start off by saying that I think that McCain is on the right track with this one.  This is the best proposal I have heard thus far (other than what the Fed is doing currently with commercial paper) to solve the economic crisis America faces.

First, a bit of an explanation of the root problem…  and I am going to simplify as much as possible, talking about the major themes (and ignore important but smaller ones…)

The fundamental cause of the problems with the banks and the economy as a whole originate in the housing crisis.

The housing bubble led to greater and greater numbers of risky loans and exploded when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started acting much like a hedge fund and invested in the very paper they were insuring.  This led to an explosion in the market and decreasing underwriting standards, especially when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made the “Alt A” programs available. 

The banks began to group these loans (aka bank debt) together into packages and sell them off to other banks.  The bank that bought them took these packages of loans  and divided them into “risk tiers” and sold those tiers as derivatives.  These banks then grouped the derivatives together and divided them further, until the original group was chopped into so many loans it was impossible to tell what was where.

This, in theory, should have minimized the risk associated with the loans.

Because of the grouping and dividing and selling and grouping and dividing and selling, virtually all the banks were heavily invested in these MBSs (mortgage backed security) and CDO’s (collateralized debt obligation.)

Then the economy slowed…  and housing was the one beacon of light in a dimming economy, so the banks, hedge funds, investors, and consumers invested even more heavily in real estate.

As time went on, the banks began to discover that a much larger than expected percentage of the loans were given to people that should not have gotten them.  The bulk of these “bad loans” were found in the Alt A realm that banks would not have normally invested as heavily in, but for the actions and rules of Fannie and Freddie.

With the economy continuing to slow, eventually the housing sector peaked and the dam broke. 

Foreclosures began to happen at an epidemic rate because the people that should not have been in the loans they were given couldn’t pay.

So the banks/hedge funds and especially Fannie/Freddie realized that they should not have been offering all these loans tightened up their lending standards because they couldn’t continue to offer the crap loans they had been offering, which would have made the hole they were in that much deeper.

The side effect of this was that, especially in a slowing economy, fewer and fewer people could qualify for new loans to buy all the houses that were pouring on to the market from new construction projects (at an all time high) and from massive foreclosures.

The housing market glutted, the banks began to dump the foreclosures for next to nothing and all the other houses sat on the market for a year or more. 

With only the foreclosures selling, they were the only sales to peg the prices of houses against and property values started dropping like crazy, especially in places where the bubble was biggest…  CA, FL, NV.

This has caused the secondary crisis…  there are millions upon millions of people upside down on their houses right now.  Millions.

So because of the problems with 10-15% of the loans, and the foreclosures they led to, the values of the houses with credit worthy people now had problematic loans because their property was worth less than the mortgage was for.

Essentially, the banks no longer knew what any of their loans were worth, because the assets tied to the loan weren’t worth enough to cover the outstanding debts, increasing the balance sheet debts of the banks by billions and billions and billions of dollars.

This made the banks “uncreditworthy” and so they stopped loaning money to eachother, leading to near of total collapse of a huge number of banks.

So, in order to solve the valuation problem, keep people in their homes and prevent more foreclosures, and to prop up the prices of homes as much as possible, earlier this year, the Congress approved a program called the “FHA Secure.” 

This program basically works like this…  if you have a $300,000 loan and your house is only worth $225,000 now, if the bank will lower the balance to the $225,000 then the FHA will insure the loan, making the loan more immediately marketable.

The bill and the program went into effect October 1. 

Not a single bank has implemented this plan to date.

The problem is two fold; 

First, it is voluntary…  the banks don’t have to do it.

Second, it requires that the banks take HUGE writedowns and though it may help even out the bottom line in the long run, in the short term those HUGE writedowns would probably kill them at this point…  especially perceptually.

Nobody wants that.

Ok, so now that we are caught up to present times, we can talk about McCain’s housing plan.

John McCain has basically taken the FHA Secure program, and instead of making the banks take the writedowns and essentially forfeit hundreds of billions of dollars…  McCain wants to re-allocate the “Bailout” money to buy out the negative equity on these people’s houses.

Why is this great?

1.  The estimated cost, about $300 Billion…  A number that is less than half of the “Bailout” which only helps banks/Wall Street and does nothing directly for mainstreet.

2.  It keeps people in their homes, reducing their balances and their payments.

3.  It helps prop up housing prices, or at least stabilize them, because it will lead to fewer foreclosures.

4.  It bails out the consumer and the banks in one fell swoop. 

Helps the folks, helps the banks.  Bingo.  I think he has something right there!

Read more here

Brilliant.

As I said, this is the best idea to solve the crisis I have heard so far (other than the fed buying commercial paper… also brilliant.)

 

(and yes, it’s basically Hillary Clinton’s plan, but don’t tell the Republicans LOL)

The Presidential Debate, The Sequel.

Well, this time around was much better for McCain than the first. 

What most people don’t know is that McCain immediately broke one of the rules of the debate by walking more than 3 feet from his stool, right over to a concerned citizen to talk directly to him.

Why?

Because McCain cared. 

McCain walked right over to the guy, looked him in the eye and gave him the classic McCain “Straight Talk.”

Also, McCain landed quite a few heavy blows, with very little as far as a response from Obama…  just obfusification, especially on the question of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac when McCain charged Obama and his “cronies” for blocking his legislation to reform the two GSE’s. 

Obama’s only response to the five or six sentence explanation that McCain gave showing how Obama and his buddies were tied into the housing crisis…  “I never promoted Fannie Mae…” and then he moved on.  That was his only response! 

Weak.

McCain clearly won this debate, but he missed the jugular.  He didn’t land the knock out punch he really needs.  So in a way, because Obama survived the match still standing, he wins a little too.

The polls will probably show an uptick of a point, maybe two, for McCain because of the debate, but not much more than that.

The real impact on how people are going to vote is probably going to result from the pitbull Sarahcuda and her attacks, which will drive Obama’s negatives up.  These results are already showing up in the polls, as can be seen in this group of four quoted in the American Sentinel;

National	Rasmussen Tracking	Obama 51, McCain 45	Obama +6
National	Reuters/CSpan/Zogby Tracking	Obama 47, McCain 45	Obama +2
National	Hotline/FD Tracking	Obama 45, McCain 44	Obama +1
National	GW/Battleground Tracking	Obama 49, McCain 45	Obama +4

The Obama campaign is trying to counter with accusations of racism and by rehashing a badly warped version of the Keating 5 story.

In my opinion, in and of itself, the debate was a net tie, but McCain laid the ground work for a very tough October for the Obama camp.

Black Congressmen: Palin Is A Racist! She Uses Code Words!!!

From The New York Observer

As the McCain campaign ratchets up the intensity of its attacks on Barack Obama, some black elected officials are calling the tactics desperate, unseemly and racist.

“They are trying to throw out these codes,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York.

“He’s ‘not one of us?’” Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Florida. “That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.”

“Racism is alive and well in this country, and McCain and Palin are trying to appeal to that and it’s unfortunate,” said Representative Ed Towns, also from New York….

….Ms. Palin told donors in Englewood, Colo.,….  “This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said. “We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”

An Associated Press analysis characterized those remarks as “unsubstantiated” and carrying “a racially tinged subtext…..”

“Some may say their true colors are showing,” said Representative Yvette Clarke of New York. “Others may say they’re just not being thoughtful. But certainly a lot of the language I’ve heard I consider to be incendiary. I believe it is meant to generate a certain sentiment within their base that engenders fear and certainly appeals to a group of people within our society who would pursue this along racial lines.

“It’s very clear,” she said.

Ms. Clarke also found a racial subtext in Ms. Palin’s repeated appeals to “Joe Six-Pack” and “hockey moms.”

“Who exactly is Joe Six-Pack and who are these hockey moms? That’s what I’d like to know,” she said. “Is that supposed to be terminology that is of common ground to all Americans? I don’t find that. It leaves a lot of people out.”

New York State Senator Bill Perkins, an early supporter of Mr. Obama, said, “They are obviously playing on people’s fears and prejudices in a desperate way. While not explicitly relating to race, they are clearly creating the opportunity for those inclined to come to those conclusions. I think it is going to become more explicit as we move forward. It’s subtle now, but not so subtle as to be mistaken.”

And Kevin Parker, a New York state senator from Brooklyn, said, “If you have to remind people that Barack Obama is African-American, you have reached the bottom.”

 

I have a very serious question…

Have all the Democrats that drank the Obama koolaid become paranoid schizophrenics?  I really wanna know.  If you tell me yes, it will make me feel much better.

I will understand that they have a mental illness that they can’t help…  the delusions of persecution from an oedipal female mother figure archetype would just be the product of a disease and not what these people REALLY think…

Or perhaps they all share a strikingly similar form of Tourette’s Syndrome where “code words” and “racist” gets blurted out at nonsensical times…

I don’t know, but this bullshit is friggin crazy, it is incredibly irresponsible, and to be honest, it is incredibly dangerous.

Add this to the coments of other Democrats of all races that have screamed the word “RACISM!!!” and pointed their fingers at everyone from all the Republicans to Bill Clinton of all people!!!  (Holy God, was that some serious dumb.)

Regardless…  This is only further dividing our society and creating a dangerous sentiment of suspicion and anger…  and in this case, it can create a very different situation where, if these irresponsible politicians and the media that perpetuates their message continue to push this idea that there is rampant racism in white America and that racism could be the only explanation as to why Obama would not win the election…  we could very well see irreparable damage done to race relations in the country AT BEST, and at worst we will see racial violence and rioting.

It’s almost as if that is what they want?  They may not, but they are definitely not hiding the fact that violence and repercussions are what they are threatening.

The anger these people are toying with is real, it is dangerous and it is explosive.  There are historical precedents to situations with much less gravity than the Office of the President that have sparked violence  that we can point to, so we know the threat is real.

The saddest part of this whole thing is that it is THE standard campaign tactic in Obama campaign manager David Axelrod’s playbook.  Axelrod has done this same thing many times before, and in many campaigns, even as recently as the primary versus Hillary Clinton.

Inciting racial hatred and suspicion to gain power is what these people do.  This is quite literally David Axelrod’s niche in political campaign management.  This is his job and this is why Obama hired him.

This is dangerous and they need to stop.  It is wrong and irresponsible.

.

Am I saying racism does not exist, no I am not.  It does still exist, regrettably.

But the vast majority of Americans are not racist, and when they cry racism in an undeserved context, they are actually  diminishing not only themselves but the one they sought to defend.

When these people cry racism in such situations, they remove the humanity and the complexity of the man that Barack Obama is and reduce him to his skin color.

There are a great many reasons to love Barack Obama, just as there are innumerable reasons to really dislike him.

When they reduce the reasons why people feel about Obama the way they happen to down to just skin color, THEY are the ones dehumanizing him, not Palin, not McCain.

When they reduce Obama to his skin color, THEY are the ones that have issues with race, not Palin, not McCain.

McCain campaign spokesman Peter Feldman said it best:

“It is disappointing that Barack Obama and his supporters continue to play the race card from the bottom of the deck. This is a tactic that the Obama Campaign has used before, and which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis correctly called ‘divisive, shameful, and wrong.’ It is legitimate for John McCain to ask questions about Barack Obama’s relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers because Senator Obama has not been truthful about this relationship. Many Americans want these questions answered. Despite the fact that Barack Obama has been running for president since joining the Senate, many Americans are still wondering, ‘who is Barack Obama?’ These comments are a sure sign of a flailing campaign that refuses to be honest with voters and that is bordering on desperation.”

Instead of Obama bringing us together like he promised to do when he gave his rhetorically brilliant yet somehow empty speech on racism, it seems his sole aim is to divide us as much as possible to gain a political advantage.

He wants power so bad, he is willing to wreck America to get it.

Hell No, No Bama, No Deal, No Friggin Way.

Country First.

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UPDATE:  I woke up this morning and turned on CNN and guess what was on…  a special about Union activists campaigning door to door in PA and OH, and their struggle to deal with racism against Obama….  Nice, right?

So I listen for a while and then it peeks it’s head out in one of the comments…  a canvasser talks about how he has run into the problem “a few times.”  Well, as a canvasser you can visit hundreds of homes a week…  and in a predominantly white, blue collar, working class, heavy union neighborhood, they run into the problem a “few times?”

And this justifies a CNN special report why?  Oh yeah, it’s spin and bullshit.  That’s why.

And then there was the statement from Obama…  I am doing this from memory, but this is what he said almost word for word…

I don’t think race is a problem in the race.  Look, I am ahead in the polls…  that means that the American people are basically good.  They are judging me on my policies and on what I want to do, not my skin color.

Ok, on first pass, not a bad statement, right? 

But we have to look at the more subtle meaning of what he said… 

“Look, I am ahead in the polls…  that means that the American people are basically good.”

He subtly hints that if he were behind in the polls or that if people were to vote against him, then they would not be good and they would be racist.

Those are code words.  Real code words.

Palin’s comment about terrorists…  not code words.

USN&WR: Democrats Were Wrong On Fannie/Freddie; McCain Was Right

USN&WR

Seventeen. That’s how many times, according to this White House statement (hat tip Gateway Pundit), that the Bush administration has called for tighter regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress has cooperated only once. In spring 2007, as House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank likes to point out, the House did pass a bill in response. The Senate did not act until 2008; Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd spent most of 2007 camped out in Iowa running for president. The legislation passed by Congress in 2008 enabled Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to put Fannie and Freddie into federal conservatorship this summer when they failed. But it didn’t prevent them from spewing a huge amount of toxic waste, in the form of subprime and Alt-A mortgages, into our financial institutions from 2004 to 2007. As Stephen Spruiell points out in The Corner on National Review Online, Fannie and Freddie spewed out $1 trillion worth (face value) of subprime mortgages between 2005 and 2007. That’s a whole lot of toxic waste. For more detail, consult the items referred to in my previous blogpost on this subject (most of the comments seem to have been disputes about the plot line of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, which I should think could be settled by consulting a reference work).

Much if not all of that could have been prevented by a bill cosponsored by John McCain and supported by all the Republicans and opposed by all the Democrats in the Senate Banking Committee in 2005. That bill, which the Democrats stopped from passing, would have prohibited the GSEs from speculating on the mortgage-based securities they packaged. The GSEs’ mission allegedly justifying their quasi-governmental status was to package or securitize such mortgages, but the lion’s share of their profits—which determined top executives’ bonuses—came from speculation.

John McCain has shied away from making this an issue, for reasons my U.S. News colleague Jim Pethokoukis speculates on. This National Republican Congressional Committee Web ad makes the point McCain has been avoiding. Jim Geraghty of the Campaign Spot blog at National Review Online seems exasperated by the McCain campaign’s failure to exploit this issue….

More at the link…

The only word I can think of, in internent parlance, is PWNT.

McCain; Who Is Barack Obama? The American People Deserve Answers.

In Alburquerque, NM, John McCain delivered a speech and opened up the proverbial “can of whoop ass” and questioned everything about Obama that everyone keeps skirting by, calling Obama out on his lies and manufacturing of facts, and muddying the waters of his past, obscuring the real Barack Obama….

I pretty much have one thing to say…

It’s about damn time.

This is a short clip of his speech…  it was the only one I could find, but the full transcript can be found below.

Transcript from RCP

U.S. Senator John McCain today delivered the following remarks as prepared for delivery at the McCain-Palin 2008 rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico:

In less than a month, the American people will make a choice on where they want this country to go, and who they trust to lead us in a time of war and economic crisis. The time for debating and electioneering is drawing to a close. Soon it will be the time for choosing.

Today we have seen a reminder of the importance of that choice. The action Congress took last week to address our financial crisis was a tourniquet, but not a permanent solution. Today we are seeing the stock market fall, and the credit crisis spread to other parts of the world. Our economy is still hurting — working families are worried about the price of groceries, the price of gas, keeping their jobs and paying their mortgage — further action is needed. We need to restore confidence in our economy and in our government.

Washington is still on the wrong track and we still need change. The status quo is not on the ballot. We are going to see change in Washington. The question is: in what direction will we go? Will our country be a better place under the leadership of the next president — a more secure, prosperous, and just society? Will you be better off, in the jobs you hold now and in the opportunities you hope for? Will your sons and daughters grow up in the kind of country you wish for them, rising in the world and finding in their own lives the best of America? And which candidate’s experience — in government and in life — makes him a more reliable leader for our country and commander in chief for our troops? Who is ready to lead? In a time of trouble and danger for our country, who will put our country first?

I set out on my own campaign for president many months ago. I promised at the beginning to be straight with the American people, knowing that even those who don’t agree with me on everything would expect at least that much. I didn’t just show up out of nowhere, after all — America knows me.

You know my strengths and my faults. You know my story and my convictions. And though familiarity in politics can be both helpful to a candidate, or not so helpful, it does at least fill out the picture and answer the essential questions. You need to know who you’re putting in the White House — where the candidate came from and what he or she believes. And you need to know now, before it is time to choose.

In 21 months, during hundreds of speeches, town halls and debates, I have kept my promise to level with you about my plans to reform Washington and get this country moving again. As a senator, I’ve seen the corrupt ways of Washington in wasteful spending and other abuses of power, and as president I’m going to end them — whatever it takes. I will propose and sign into law reforms to bring tax relief to the middle class and help to businesses so they can create jobs. I will get the rising cost of food and gas under control. I will help families keep their home, and help students struggling to pay for college. I will make health care more accessible and affordable. I will impose a spending freeze on all but the most vital functions of government. I will review every agency of the federal government, improve those that need to be improved and eliminate those that aren’t working for the American people. I will confront the ten trillion-dollar debt that the federal government has run up, and balance the federal budget by the end of my term in office.

This is the agenda I have set before my fellow citizens. And the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent. Even at this late hour in the campaign, there are essential things we don’t know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign.

We have all heard what he has said, but it is less clear what he has done or what he will do. What Senator Obama says today and what he has done in the past are often two different things. He has often changed his positions in this campaign, and the best way to determine where he would really take this country is to examine where he has tried to take it in the past.

My opponent has invited serious questioning by announcing a few weeks ago that he would quote — “take off the gloves.” Since then, whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar.

Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms I know. I don’t need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician.

My opponent’s touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book. It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.

Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. What was his actual record in the years before the great economic crisis of our lifetimes?
This crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them. Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread. This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.

Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign.

He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them. Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans? Did he ever discuss with them the stronger oversight I proposed? If Senator Obama is such a champion of financial regulation, why didn’t he support these regulations that could have prevented this crisis in the first place? He won’t tell you, but you deserve an answer.

Even after he refused to lift a finger to prevent this crisis, when the crisis hit, he was missing in action. He didn’t start making calls to round up votes until after the rescue bill failed in the House and the markets crashed. We continue to see the price of delay today as the markets continue to fall. Today the DOW has fallen below 10,000. And yet, members of his own party said they felt no pressure to vote for the bill. Why didn’t Senator Obama work to pass this bill from the start? Why did he let it fail and drag out this crisis for a full week before doing a thing to help pass it?

Again on taxes, we see a difference between what Senator Obama says today, what he said yesterday and what he has actually done. Over the course of this campaign, he has had many different plans to raise your taxes. During the Democratic primary, he promised to double taxes on every American with a dividend or an investment. He promised to raise payroll taxes. He promised higher taxes on electricity. Now, Senator Obama claims he will give 95 percent of Americans tax relief. He actually promised the same thing when he was running for Senate in Illinois, but once elected he never introduced legislation to do so. Instead, he voted for the Democratic budget resolution that promised to raise taxes on people making just 42,000 dollars a year. At the time, he even said his vote was intended to get “our nation’s priorities back on track.” If he’s such a defender of the middle class, why did he vote to raise their taxes? Whatever ha ppened to the tax relief he promised them when he was a candidate for the Senate? And why should middle class Americans trust him to keep promises he has already broken?

Senator Obama and I both have differences with how President Bush has handled the economy. But he thinks taxes are too low, and I think spending is too high. The government’s out of control spending has resulted in a weaker dollar, raising the cost of groceries and gasoline, and killing jobs.
I will veto pork barrel legislation and cut wasteful government spending.

Senator Obama has a different plan. According to third party estimates, he will increase government spending by over 860 billion dollars. He has denied it, but he has refused to tell you how much he does plan to spend. What is the total of his increased spending? Americans deserve to know just how much more of their money Senator Obama intends to spend, and how much more debt he plans to burden them with.

Senator Obama has also criticized earmark spending, those wasteful pork barrel projects stuck in spending bills behind closed doors. And yet, despite his talk on the campaign trail, his actual record is full of requests for earmark projects. In his three short years in the Senate, he has requested nearly a billion dollars in pork projects for his state — a million dollars for every day he’s been in office. Far from fighting earmarks in Congress, Senator Obama has been an eager participant in this corrupt system. In one instance, he sought more than 3 million dollars for a new projector at a planetarium in his hometown. Coincidentally, the chairman of that planetarium pledged to raise more than $200,000 for Senator Obama’s campaign. We don’t know if they ever discussed the money for the planetarium, and no one has asked Senator Obama. But even the appearance of this kind of insider-dealing disgusts Americans. I’m going to put a stop to that, my friends, if I’m President.

I have made every single donor to my campaign publicly available, while Senator Obama has taken in over 200 million dollars from undisclosed sources. We have already seen the potential for fraud because of his refusal to disclose his donors. His campaign had to return $33,000 in illegal foreign funds from Palestinian donors, and this weekend, we found out about another $28,000 in illegal donations. Why has Senator Obama refused to disclose the people who are funding his campaign? Again, the American people deserve answers.

On health care, Senator Obama has been misleading you about my plan to give you more money for health care, and he has been equally misleading about his own plans. He has said his goal is a single payer system where government is in charge of health care and bureaucrats stand between you and your doctor. Under the plan he has proposed, he will fine families that don’t have the kind of health insurance that Senator Obama tells them to purchase. He will fine employers who do not offer the health insurance that he thinks they should offer.

What he doesn’t say, and what nobody has asked, is how big his fines will be. What he doesn’t want you to know is that with a small fine, his plan will encourage companies to just pay the fine, drop existing health care coverage for their employees and leave them with only one real option: government run health care.

Who is the real Senator Obama? Is he the candidate who promises to cut middle class taxes, or the politician who voted to raise middle class taxes? Is he the candidate who talks about regulation or the politician who took money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and turned a blind eye as they ran our economy into a ditch?

Is he the candidate who promises change, or is he the politician who has bought into everything that is wrong with Washington? We can’t change the system with someone who’s never fought the system.

Washington is on the wrong track and I’m going to set it right. The American people know my record. They know I am going to change Washington, because I’ve done it before. They know I’m going to reform our broken institutions in Washington and on Wall Street because I’ve done it before. They know I’m going to deliver relief to the middle class, because that’s what I’ve done.

You don’t have to hope that things will change when you vote for me. You know things will change, because I have been fighting for change in Washington my whole career. I’ve been fighting for you my whole life. That’s what I’m going to do as President of the United States. Fight for you and put the government back on the side of the people.

Hey, Obama… the Keating 5; I Don’t Think That Means What You Think It Does?

Apparently Obama is a bit frightened of the coming hardball game that McCain and his crew are gearing up for.  So much so that Obama is telegraphing a move he could make as a warning to McCain…

The Keating 5.

From the AP

Barack Obama’s allies warn that John McCain’s attacks on the Democrat’a character will lead to the political equivalent of mutual assured destruction: fire your big weapon at your own peril.

Several Obama surrogates said his supporters may start reminding voters of McCain’s ties to Charles Keating, a convicted savings and loan owner whose actions two decades ago triggered a Senate ethics investigation that involved McCain as one of the “Keating Five.”

Well, it seems that Obama fulfilled the promise and quietly released a youtube video on the subject called Keating Economics.

For those of you that are not familiar, the Keating 5 is a term that refers to a group of 5 Senators that were accused of corrupt dealings with a banker named Keating during the “Savings and Loan Crisis” of the 80′s.

The group of Senators was comprised of 4 Democrats and 1 Republican…  John McCain.

Only problem is that John McCain (as well as John Glenn) was completely exonerated of any wrong doing what-so-ever by the Special Prosecutor Robert Bennet and recommended removing John McCain from any further investigation.

The problem was that removing John McCain would remove the only Republican from the corruption case and politically the Democrats in power could not afford to have 3 of their Senators sit up there alone, going down in flames for shady dealings.

Against the wishes of the Special Prosecutor, the Democratic Chair of the Ethics Committee kept McCain’s name on the list and gave him what essentially amounted to a scowl and a wagging finger.  The committee decided that McCain’s actions “were not improper nor attended with gross negligence,” about which McCain said…  “I see it as a full exoneration”

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Yeah, so let’s tell that story Barry…  about how John McCain is a good and honorable man, yet there were 3 DEMOCRATIC Senators at the center of the “Savings and Loan Crisis.”

Yeah, Barry, lets talk about how wonderfully the Democrats have handled the banking institutions…  there couldn’t possibly be a parallel to today’s problems could there?

I dare you to keep pushing this meme…

Keep talking about the corrupt Democrats and the uncorruptable John McCain.  Yeah, do that…  Keep talking…

I double dog dare you.

Even Saturday Night Live knows the Democrats are the root of the cause…

CLICK HERE

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Oh, and lest I forget about the Keating 3

Three of… the Keating Five have endorsed Obama: Former senators Dennis DeConcini. John Glenn, and Donald W. Riegle. All three are Democrats… and DeConcini and Riegle were among the more deeply implicated officials.

The Bailout: Say Goodbye To All Of Obama’s Campaign Promises

The past ten days has radically shifted the entire course of the Presidential campaigns… but seemingly not in the way that most people have caught on to yet.

From Firedoglake

I can’t think of any way to sugar coat this, I’m afraid. It’s a bad bill and it isn’t just that Barack Obama voted for it, it’s that everything I’m hearing from the Hill says that he’s been actively whipping it, not just in the Senate but in the House. Barack didn’t hold his nose and vote for this, he made it his bill as much as it is Paulson’s.

With this bill go your chances of having, say, universal health care, or massive infrastructure development, or really getting the US of its dependence on foreign oil, or really rebuilding America’s school system—or whatever other big, expensive project you thought Obama was promising….

….And it’s Barack Obama who turned to Nancy Pelosi and Reid and said “this bill must pass”. It’s Obama who is whipping votes and bending arms for this despite the fact that it is massively unpopular. This is Obama’s bill.

….That’s Obama’s first real act as the presumptive President and as the Democratic party’s de-facto leader.

I both agree and disagree with this article.

While I do agree that the bill as passed is less than great, I disagree with the author’s reasoning behind why the bill is so bad.  As I have said before, the bill is a necessary evil and is better than not acting at all, but the bill as it was passed was terrible because of all the pork.

I do agree with the author that all of the projects that Obama has promised are dead in the water now.

Obama’s proposed projects would cost the United States $1.2 trillion…  and he just signed on to a bill that eats about $815 billion out of the budget.  It will be virtually impossible to add anything else of any size to the budget, even for the god-like Barack Obama.

It’s no wonder that Obama is getting really vague about what he is actually still going to accomplish… especially during the debates

LEHRER: All right. All right, speaking of things that both of you want, another lead question, and it has to do with the rescue — the financial rescue thing that we started — started asking about.

And what — and the first answer is to you, Senator Obama. As president, as a result of whatever financial rescue plan comes about and the billion, $700 billion, whatever it is it’s going to cost, what are you going to have to give up, in terms of the priorities that you would bring as president of the United States, as a result of having to pay for the financial rescue plan?

OBAMA: Well, there are a range of things that are probably going to have to be delayed. We don’t yet know what our tax revenues are going to be. The economy is slowing down, so it’s hard to anticipate right now what the budget is going to look like next year.

But there’s no doubt that we’re not going to be able to do everything that I think needs to be done.

Lehrer went on to press Obama even further and Obama got even more avoidant. The sidestepping during the debate was really interesting to watch though.

With those few deft phrases, Obama has basically absolved himself of actually having to deliver on any promises what-so-ever if he becomes President.

As the author from Firedoglake said… say good by to “universal health care, or massive infrastructure development, or really getting the US of its dependence on foreign oil, or really rebuilding America’s school system—or whatever other big, expensive project you thought Obama was promising.”

The fact is that, because of the price tag of the bailout bill, Obama cannot fulfill a single promise he has made and has as much as admitted it.

John McCain on the other hand can still deliver on his promises.  He wants to cut spending and increase oversight to stimulate the economy, increase job creation and keep industry honest and on track.

And, so I will leave you with this…

Knowing all of the above…  what is your answer to Bill Clinton’s question now?

For example, you’re a voter, and you have Candidate X and Candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything. But you don’t think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that, on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom will you vote?

The Bailout – A Clairifcation Of My Position

Ok, now that President Bush has signed the “Bailout/Rescue” Bill, I feel the need to clarify my thoughts on the bill.

Do I oppose the passage of the bill as it appeared in both the House and the Senate? Absolutely.

Do I oppose the basic principle of the bill? No.

Unfortunately, and as much as I hated it, the bill was necessary.  Period.  No if’s, and’s or but’s.

Who was at fault?

In a word…  everyone…  from the banks, to the politicians on both sides of the aisle, to the public.  This is AMERICA’s fault.

Why Did/Do I support the basic principle of the bill?

Well, the large amount of unstable and insolvent debt the banks owned caused an immense amount of fear and distrust within the financial markets to such an extent that the banks stopped loaning each other money, much less loaning money to corporations and businesses.

While I agree that the “bailout” of stupid decisions is less than ideal, the consequences of doing nothing were so dire that it had to be done.

Coming on the heels of a general economic downturn, and the YTD loss of more than 750,000 jobs, the credit crisis becomes all the more dangerous.  The credit markets were completely frozen this week.  At the highest levels, money stopped.  Dead.  Literally.

This could not happen any longer.  If it did, it is entirely possible that by the end of next week, the economy would come to a screeching halt and we would be completely dead in the water, plunging into a horrendously bad depression…  potentially even worse than what we saw in 1929.  Really.

Companies would not be able to get short term credit (usually overnight borrowing) to meet payrolls, businesses would see the lines of credit they use for inventory purchasing and general operations shut down, and good luck getting a car loan or a mortgage.

By purchasing the questionable mortgages and mortgage backed securities, this allieviates much of the balance sheet strain on the financial institutions, making them much more stable, freeing up cash so that they become able to lend and also so that other banks are willing to lend to them.

So why did I object so strongly to the bill if I think it was necessary?

In a word…  Pork.  This bill got so overloaded with “sweeteners” and pork that it is unreal.

I am very, very upset over this.

Am I against everything that got added to the bill?

No, absolutely not.  I support many of the things that were added.  Many.

For instance…  the tax credits encouraging green energy and energy efficiency are fantastic.  I whole heartedly support those provisions.  Also, the mental health parity provision is one that has been a long time coming.

They do not belong in this bill though.  They deserve thier own.

Was everything that got added total crap?

No.  As a matter of fact, there were a couple things that were added that were very smart.

The temporary increase in FDIC insurance to prevent withdrawal of funds from banks was an intelligent and necessary move that retains a lot of liquidity in the banks.  In addition, the provisions on executive compensation were good…  not ideal, but at least they were there.

So what got added that was crap?

Tax breaks and earmarks got added for Hollywood, NASCAR, Puerto Rican Rum Producers, Virgin Island Rum Producers, the makers of wooden arrow shafts that boy scouts use, fisherman, businesses in American Somoa and all sorts of other little goodies.

Why does this make me so upset?

The reason this makes me so upset is that while working on the most sweeping and important piece of legislation that most of the people in Congress, House or Senate, will probably ever work on in their entire careers…  these selfish, greedy, pandering, blame shifting, irresponsible (ARRRRGGGGHHH) politicians decided that they would spend some of their time thinking about and fighting for other things, and some of those things as insignificant and friggin wooden arrow shafts!!!

Raise the price of the arrows by 2 cents!  I don’t give a crap!!!

Pay attention to the potential bankruptcy of the United States and the precipice of a world wide depression the likes we have never DREAMED of.

Jesus…  stop thinking about yourselves!!!!!  Keep your eye on the god damned ball!!!

Is there more coming or are we close to the end?

I hope we are close to the end, but I don’t think we are.  This was a necessary first step.

So far, the mortgage meltdown and credit crunch has been like a really angry Bull Mastiff sitting in the corner impatiently waiting to take us down.

When the derivatives market and CDS’s start unravelling…  then we will see a really pissed off gorilla of a problem charge into the room.  Hopefully the “Rescue” has put a bit of a leash on this bad boy, but who knows?

I will be discussing the derivatives and debt/default credit swaps in coming posts, so stay tuned…  it’s going to get really interesting, but I will leave you with this little tidbit…

Warren Buffett said that he stay away from the derivatives market because he didn’t really have a good understanding of how it worked….

If Warren Buffett was afraid of the market and essentially said it was nonsensical, can you imagine the mess that sector is in?

What effect has this had on my political stance?

Now, more than ever before, this process has solidified my feet in the McCain/Palin camp.

Washington needs to be reformed.  The culture of pork and earmarks has to stop because it is exactly this sort of selfish shortsightedness that got us into the damned problem in the first place!!!

Only one person on either ticket had the judgement and foresight to predict this crisis…  John McCain.

Only one person has a career long record fighting against earmarks and pork…  John McCain.

Only two people have a reputation of fighting corruption in both the other party as well as their own…  John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Only two people have lived the words “Country First”…  John McCain and Sarah Palin.

McCain/Palin.  Country First.

Fact Check: Voting Along Party Lines

I will let this one speak for itself…  From CNN

The Statement:
Gov. Sarah Palin said at the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate that Sen. Barack Obama has “pretty much only voted along his party lines. In fact, 96 percent of his votes have been solely along party line.”

Get the facts!

 

The Facts:
Congressional Quarterly examined Obama’s votes in the Senate. According to the analysis, Obama has indeed voted with the Democratic Party 96 percent of the time.

CQ – a non-partisan and highly respected journal of Congressional affairs – says Senator John McCain has voted in line with the Republican Party 86 percent of the time. McCain’s total number of votes is much larger, since he has been in the Senate since 1986, while Obama is in his first term.

Congressional Quarterly also looked at what it deemed to be “key” votes. That analysis found Obama voted with his party on 29 out of 30 votes, which came out to 97 percent of the time. For McCain, CQ said there have been 335 “key” votes over the years, and that he voted with his party on 266 of them — 79 percent of the time.

The Verdict: True.

The Greatest YouTube Ever

Via Divine Democrat

New McCain Ad: Barackbook.com

http://www.barackbook.com is an actual website featured in the video…  it’s hilarious!