The Democrat culture of corruption continues.  Wealthy Democrat donor Raj Rajaratnam, founder of hedge fund Galleon Group, was charged with insider trading.  Rajaratnam is a supporter of Barack Obama.  He donated $4,600 to Obama and $30,800 to Obama Victory Fund in 2008.

View Rajaratnam’s political contributions from Democrats here:

Democrat Raj Rajaratnam’s Political Contributions

The page is a copy of the results of a search of Rajaratnam’s donations at fec.gov.

WSJ Article

I found some media bias exhibited by ABC News.  The news network (if you can call it that) reported that Rajaratnam donated to Hillary Clinton, but they did not report that he also donated to Obama until the final paragraph of the article on page two.

ABC News Article

The New York hedge fund billionaire indicted today in an alleged $20 million insider trading scheme, Raj Rajaratnam, was a major contributor to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and also the single largest known U.S. contributor to a charity linked to the Tamil Tiger terror group in Sri Lanka, according to records obtained by ABCNews.com.

From page two:

Rajaratnam and his wife were also major contributors to a number of Democratic campaigns, giving a total of $118,000 to, among others, the Senate campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer and the presidential campaigns of Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama.

Why did ABC News mention the donations to Hillary Clinton in the first paragraph, but wait until the second page to mention the donations to Barack Obama when Obama received much more money than Hillary did from Rajaratnam?

Hillary Clinton received a total of $6,500 in donations from Rajaratnam.  Barack Obama received a total of $35,400.

It seems to me that Obama should have been mentioned first.  Not only since he received five times the money that Hillary did, but because he is President.

By now, you’ve probably seen several “news” stories about Obama’s first 100 days in office.  No doubt, you’ve noticed how the media keeps saying how “ambitious” and “bold” Obama’s plans are.

How are $2 trillion annual budget deficits ambitious or bold?  Wouldn’t the proper words to describe Obama’s first 100 days be more along the lines of dangerous, reckless, bankrupting, and foolish?

I still cannot believe how the media is shilling for Obama.  Obama quadruples the budget deficit, then plans to cut it in half, which is still twice as high as its highest ever level, and all the media can do is latch onto that one part and parrot it endlessly as if he’s doing something good.

What about the massive inflation that is coming down the road as a result of all the government spending?  Or the higher interest rates due to the “crowding out” effect of government borrowing?  Or the fact that 100% taxation on the “rich” won’t even come close to closing Obama’s budget deficits, meaning that all Americans will eventually endure massive tax increases?

Or what about the massive tax increases on all Americans that are coming in the form of a carbon cap-and-trade scheme which will raise the cost of all production and all goods and services sold in this country?  Or the millions of jobs that will be lost as companies flee America for countries where costs of production and taxes are lower?  Already we have seen that jobs in energy-intensive industries are being lost at the highest rates due to the carbon taxes around the corner.

Why isn’t the media reporting on the effects that Obama’s “ambitious” and “bold” policies are going to have on the average American?

It seems there have been a rash of mass murders across the country since President Barack Obama took office less than three months ago.  I guess you could call this the Obama effect on society.  One might expect certain high-crime segments of our society to feel empowered by someone in the White House who looks like them, but Obama seems to have drawn out murderous kooks of all stripes.

AP Mass Murders Article

Mass murder is nothing new, and the invention of repeating guns only made it easier. But even experts who study the phenomenon have been stunned by the recent rash — seven in the past month, three in the past week alone.

“Boy, this is a lot,” said Safarik, now a partner with Forensic Behavioral Services International.

I find this passage from the article particularly interesting:

Most mass murderers, like most serial killers, are middle-aged, white males…

That may be true, but America is still majority white.  Based on population metrics, most mass murderers and serial killers should be white.  However, what this article doesn’t tell you is that blacks are over-represented among serial killers, as they are in all categories of violent crime, including assault and rape.  Blacks represent 12.5% of the American population, but commit over 50% of the murders and over 20% of serial murders.

Data

Serial killings by race of perpetrator:

• White:  72.82%
• Black:  21.33%
• Hispanic:  5.13%
• Asian:  0.72%

I found it interesting that the article would go out of its way to state that most mass murderers were white without mentioning the disproportionate killing by blacks.  You know how liberals are, they’ve always got to blame everything on white people.

It looks like they broke out the race of serial killers, giving Hispanics and Asians their own categories.  When the government publishes murder statistics, they lump Latinos in with Whites so as to skew the white murder rate upward.  Here are the murder offender by race statistics from 1976 to 2005.  If you notice, there are no categories for Latinos or Asians.

United States Homicide Offenders By Race

In a majority of the years in the report, blacks have committed over 50% of the murders.  But you will rarely see that reported in the media.

Since we are on the topic of racial crime due to the biased article, I’ll take the opportunity to expose a long-standing Democrat lie.

You know how Democrats have always blamed the high rate of crime among blacks on poverty?  Well, here’s the truth:  there are more whites in America in poverty than blacks.

US Poverty Statistics

According to government census statistics, in 2006 there were 16 million non-Hispanic whites living in poverty compared to about 9 million blacks.  If poverty was responsible for crime, and violent crime like murder in particular, then there should be more murders committed by whites than by blacks.  But that is not the case.  A majority of murders are not committed by whites, which represent the largest ethnic group living in poverty.

The Democratic Party has been using the “poverty causes crime” argument for decades to excuse disproportionate levels of crime among their beloved voting base and to further their agenda for more wealth redistribution.  It’s all been one big Democrat lie!

Do you want to know something interesting?  Crime correlates to intelligence as measured by IQ.  Those with lower IQ scores are several times more likely to commit crime.  Not only are dimwits more likely to commit crime, they are more likely to end up on welfare.  If you ever take the opportunity to talk to a police officer, he or she will tell you that most criminals are criminals because they are stupid, and that is why they get caught.  Criminals also vote Democrat, which is why the DFL is so hellbent on restoring voting rights to convicted felons.

No surprises.

Crime Statistics

Has anyone else noticed that the news stories about AIG’s $163 million in retention bonuses have disappeared?

Do you think these news stories would have disappeared if Bush was still President?  I think the media is covering for Obama.  The media did reveal that the Obama administration and Senator Chris Dodd were responsible for making these bonus payments possible, but they didn’t make a big deal out of it.  Right after this revelation was made, with little mention of Obama’s direct responsibility, the eruption of Democrat anger died down.

It seems the Democrats in Congress have dropped efforts to slap a 90% tax on the AIG bonus payments.  I guess pursuing this issue further would draw more attention to the fact that Democrats were responsible for it in the first place.

Have you ever noticed how many liberal journalists are going out of their way to tell us how “smart” Barack Obama is?

Is it because he’s black and the liberal journalists want to play down racial stereotypes, or because Obama is a Democrat?  Because the man is not smart.

Last Friday (February 6th, 2009), New York Times columnist David Brooks was on PBS’s Charlie Rose show for a little pro-Obama propaganda interview.  On speaking about Obama’s troubles early in his Presidency, Brooks basically blamed Obama’s genius for the problems.  Brooks said that Obama was too “smart” and had surrounded himself with too many “geniuses”.  Yes, he actually said that.  You can watch the interview here:

David Brooks On The Charlie Rose Show

This morning I hop on cnn.com and am greeted by a news headline of:  “Maher: Obama’s bright but has learning curve”.  Great, another pro-Obama propaganda piece.  From the cnn.com article:

Barack Obama is smarter than the average president, but he still has a lot to learn, according to comedian Bill Maher.

OK, and how many Presidents has no-talent Bill Maher IQ tested?  Or how many has he even met in person?  And why is a comedian a suitable judge of human intelligence?  Maher said in the interview:

But, you know, I think Obama is learning, and he certainly is the smartest guy we’ve had there that I can remember. But there’s always a learning curve.

Left-wing journalists are dismissing Obama’s early failings as either the result of inexperience–which is painfully true–or because Obama is just too damn smart.

Let’s get one thing straight:  Barack Hussein Obama is no genius.  His political strategy that got him elected was to appeal to the underclass by promising them all sorts of welfare benefits and freebies from the government.  It does not take a genius to promise to steal money from those who earn it and give it to those who did not earn it.  I could do it–anyone could.

Obama’s strategy to stimulate the economy is not particularly intelligent, either.  He is borrowing nearly $800 billion from future generations and spending it on projects that will mainly benefit his inner-city supporters.  None of the construction jobs created will benefit those with no construction skills.  And none of the jobs will be permanent.  When the government funding dries up, those jobs will disappear.  Those workers will be laid-off again.  Besides, you don’t expect a petite little secretary who lost her job to put on a hardhat and walk on steel beams 100 feet off the ground for a job that won’t last more than six months, do you?

Nothing that Barack Obama has done in his three weeks in office has demonstrated any glimmer of intelligence.  His choice of four tax cheats for leadership positions in his government wasn’t smart, was it?  Despite this, the Obama propaganda continues, and will likely continue no matter how badly Obama screws up the country or how many stupid mistakes he makes.

Pity the first black President, for he is a victim of his own intelligence…  Yeah, right.

The pro-Obama propaganda continues.  Yesterday, January 21st, 2009, the day after Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States and his first full day in office, the stock market rallied.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow 30) gained 279.01 points, or 3.51%, and the S&P 500 gained 35.02 points, or 4.35%.  The reason is that some large companies posted better-than-expected results, not President Hussein Obama.

Banking stocks rallied.  Apple posted record revenues and profits on strong sales of iPods and iPhones during the fourth quarter of 2008.  IBM also exceeded Wall Street expectations, posting an increase in fourth quarter earnings of 12% and giving an optimistic forecast for 2009.

Obama had nothing to do with any of this.  In fact, these results are a snapshot of the past–while Bush was still President.

But that doesn’t stop left-wing journalists from giving Obama credit where no credit is due.  Here’s what the LA Times said about yesterday’s market surge:

Also giving the market a lift, Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee that passing President Obama’s economic stimulus plan was essential and that the Senate’s move last week to release the second half of the government’s $700-billion financial industry rescue fund “will enable us to take the steps necessary to help get credit flowing.”

The market reacts to new information, and it does so quickly.  Obama’s economic stimulus plan was not new information as of yesterday.  We’ve known about it for weeks.  But the results of Apple, IBM, and others was new information.  That is what the market reacted to, not Obama’s stupid stimulus plan.

I’ve got news for you: iPods and iPhones are not essential products.  They are luxuries.  They are toys.  If sales of non-essential luxuries like iPods and iPhones were up in the fourth quarter of 2008, then the economy could not have been that bad.

If left alone, the economy will rebound on its own.  That’s the way the economy works.  Despite this, you can count on the liberal media giving President Obama (oh, how I hate saying that!) credit for things he had nothing to do with.

My suspicion is that the economy was never as bad as it was portrayed to be.  I also suspect that the economy was rebounding in late 2008–before Obama was elected–largely due to low gas prices.  Unfortunately, we can’t determine a trend until after the fact.  We will have to wait a few months until we have enough information to determine whether or not my hunch is correct.

The stock market tanked significantly yesterday on the inauguration of Barack Obama.  After his election in November, the stock market sank for two straight days.  You can find other stories on this topic here on DFL: Dirty Frauds & Liars if you look.

The market does not have confidence in Obama’s plans.  Not only is there a lack of confidence, but there is real concern that Obama will be damaging to the economy.

If the market viewed Obama as good for the economy, it would have risen.  The market is forward looking.  The past is irrelevant.  What does matter is what investors think is going to happen in the future.  If the market thought Obama was going to turn the economy around, it would have risen.  If the market thought that Obama would be neutral for the economy, the market would have been relatively stable.  But the market dropped sharply, erasing about six months of returns in a normal year on the day of Obama’s inauguration.

Obama has promised all sorts of tax increases that will hurt businesses and kill job creation.  So it is no surprise that the market reacted negatively by going down sharply.

Yesterday, January 20th, 2008, the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow 30) sank 332.13 points, or 4.01%, finishing under 8,000 points at 7949.09.  The S&P 500 fared even worse, shedding 44.90 points, or 5.28%, closing at a value of 805.22.

Before the election of Obama on November 4th, 2008, the Dow closed at 9625.28 and the S&P 500 closed at 1005.75.  Since Obama was elected, the Dow has sunk 1,676.19 points, or 17.4%; the S&P 500 has sunk 200.53 points, or 19.94%.

Hundreds-of-billions of dollars of wealth evaporated the day Obama was sworn-in as President of the United States.  Trillions of dollars in wealth have evaporated since his election last November.  I hope you fools who voted for him are happy.

Unfortunately, the pro-Obama propaganda campaign continues by the mainstream media.  I saw countless news stories about Obama’s speeches and the million people who attended his “historic” inauguration, but I saw not one about the stock market’s reaction to the new President.

I guess liberals in the media don’t want people to know the truth:  Obama and the Democrats are expected to cause significant economic damage.

The market has spoken.  Its message is loud and clear:  Barack Obama and the Democrats are bad for the economy.

Since I do not have cable TV, I have never understood why Democrats, and liberals in particular, express such hatred toward Fox News.  I think I am beginning to understand why:  Fox News reports the truth that the rest of the media refuses to.

For years, I have heard and read Fox News being called “Faux News” by lefties in order to soil the reputation of the highest-rated cable news network.  On various message boards, I have pointed out that Rupert Murdock, Chairman and Managing Director of News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, is a Hillary Clinton supporter and held a fundraiser for her back in 2006.  Left-wingers like to ignore such facts.

President Bush had been warning for years that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were growing out of control, taking on too much risk, and posed a huge systemic risk to the economy of the United States.  None of the major news organizations has reported this.  Instead, as you will see below, they are trying to pin the blame on him for the mortgage crisis.

White House Press Release Setting The Facts Straight

In April 2001, Bush said Fannie Mae was “a potential problem,” because “financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity.”

It turns out Bush was right.  He was also right about the need for expanded oil drilling back in 2001.  He was right about the Surge.  He was right about a lot of things and not given an ounce of credit for it.  Not only was he not given any credit, but he has been bashed repeatedly and blamed for things that he had nothing to do with such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which was the fault of the Democrat mayor of New Orleans and the Democrat governor of Louisiana who failed to order mandatory evacuations in a timely manner despite pleas from Bush.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were regulated by Congress.  Because of this, there is little to nothing that Bush could have done without action from Congress to prevent the massive failures that occurred in 2008.  Democrats don’t seem to realize that the power of the President is limited; it is Congress that writes laws and spends money, the President can only approve or veto legislation.

Back in 1999, people were sounding warning bells about Fannie and Freddie.  The Clinton administration was pressuring Fannie Mae to expand their operations to purchase more loans from originators that were made to people with poor credit ratings and low incomes.

NY Times Article Sept. 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets–including the New York metropolitan region–will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people…

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

There you have it.  You have the smoking gun proving that Democrats were the ones responsible for Fannie and Freddie getting mixed up in the junk mortgage market and you have the warning of the implosion that was to come.

But the Democrats fought against Fannie and Freddie reforms tooth and nail.  I found a video on Youtube that shows Barney Frank saying that there is no problem with Fannie Mae and quotes from other Democrats pretty much echoing that sentiment.  (I found this thanks to a poster over at livinglakecountry.com by the name of Jim who posted a link to this site.  Thanks, Jim.)

Youtube Video

Sept. 10, 2003, Treasury Secretary testified before Congress that:

We need a strong, world-class regulatory agency to oversee the prudential operations of the GSEs, and the safety and the soundness of their financial activities.

There is a clip of Democrat Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) responding:

…Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in a crisis.  The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see.  I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound, financially, and, uh, withstand some of the disaster scenarios.  And even if there were a problem, the federal government doesn’t bail them out.  But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

Talk about legendary stupidity!  Barney Frank was wrong on so many levels.  First off, there was a looming crisis with Fannie and Freddie–he was too dumb to see it.  They failed, Barney.  Secondly, there was no exaggeration of the threats of the “safety and soundness” of these two government-sponsored enterprises.  The threats were real, as history has shown.  There indeed were “serious financial losses to the Treasury”, an amount still unknown, but well into the tens-of-billions of dollars, perhaps hundreds-of-billions.  The government did bail them out, contrary to Barney Frank’s idiotic opinion.  And perhaps worst of all, it was the policies of giving loans to people who were not creditworthy that pushed the cost of housing up far beyond the rate of economic growth which in the end made housing less affordable for everyone.

As always, the Democrats’ policies end up hurting most the very people they claim to fight for.

In the end, legislation proposed by the Bush administration was blocked by Democrats in 2001.  And Democrats blocked it again every year from 2002 to 2007.

On February 17, 2005, before a House Financial Services Committee hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said about Fannie and Freddie (PDF hearing transcript):

So I think that going forward, enabling these institutions to increase in size, and they will once the crisis in their judgment passes.

We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.

At a later committee hearing, Greenspan re-iterated the need for more regulations:

If we fail to strengthen GSE regulations, we increase the possibility of insolvency and crisis.

Bloomberg Article With Greenspan’s Warnings

Yet Democrats still thwarted every attempt at GSE reform despite repeated warnings from experts.

The blame for this mess in the housing market rests solely with the Democratic Party.  Unfortunately, liberal journalists are trying to rewrite history.  Even more unfortunate, those with lesser intelligence (Democrat voters) believe it.

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article by some left-wing journalists which amounted to nothing more than a final kick in the teeth as a going away present for President Bush.  The thesis of the article is that Bush is to blame for the mortgage crisis because he supported expanded home ownership.

Sensible people know that home ownership is a good thing.  People who own their homes take more pride in their communities, are more vigilant about crime, and build a nest egg that they can draw off of in their old age.  The goal of home ownership by itself is not to blame for the mortgage crisis, as the authors are claiming.  Making mortgages to people who did not have the ability to pay the money back is the reason for the meltdown in the housing sector, not the goal of home ownership.  Bush never once advocated making loans to those with poor credit and inadequate incomes–but the Democrats did.

NY Times Blames Bush For Mortgage Crisis Article

White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire

There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

The writers do include one nugget of truth in the article.

Mr. Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants. The president spent years pushing a recalcitrant Congress to toughen regulation of the companies, but was unwilling to compromise when his former Treasury secretary wanted to cut a deal.

But they don’t absolve Bush of responsibility.  They blame him further for not wanting to cut a deal to get the regulations enacted.  And what would that deal have been?  Massive tax increases and more wealth redistribution?

(Also notice how they refer to him as “Mr. Bush” repeatedly instead of his proper title of President Bush.  Looks disrespectful to me.)

Nowhere in that article is the Democrats’ crucial role in this debacle mentioned.  Not one word is written about Democrats blocking new regulations time and again.  That doesn’t fit the Bush-bashing narrative.  But without the Democrats, there would have been no over-inflated housing values, no mortgage crisis, and there would not have been millions of foreclosures wreaking havoc on communities all over the country.

The entire article is a seething tirade against Bush and the Republicans with nothing negative to say about Democrats who caused this fiasco.

One more thing I would like to mention is that this notion that the mortgage crisis is to blame for the global recession is misleading at best and, I argue, an outright lie.  If you look at unemployment rates in the United States, you will find that they moved in near lock-step with gas prices.  In fact, unemployment in most industrialized nations rose as gas prices rose.  The vast majority of people in America and around the world were completely unaffected by the happenings in the mortgage market.  But no one was immune to high gas prices, for which the Democrats are also to blame.  We will look at that next time.

Also, we will look at who was running these big Wall Street firms that gorged themselves on subprime mortgage-backed securities leading to their failures.  Richard Fuld, the former CEO of failed investment bank Lehman Brothers, was a huge Democratic Party contributor.  Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae, is also a Democrat.  Are you starting to notice a pattern here?

Wherever you find lies, fraud, and destruction, you will find a Democrat rat scurrying around.

The media continues its nauseating love-fest with Barack Obama. Left-wing news journalists are trying to portray Obama as a great leader–before he even has become President.

A couple of weeks ago, it was widely reported that a poll suggested that Obama’s transition was rated very highly by the American people. Really? What is there to rate? All he was doing is picking people for his cabinet and other posts, most of whom are completely unknown by the American people. There isn’t much to disagree about.

Then yesterday a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll concluded that 76% of the American people feel that Obama is a “strong and decisive leader”.

“The public’s rating of his leadership skills is already as high as George W. Bush’s was after 9/11 and easily beats the numbers that both Bush and Bill Clinton got at the start of their first terms in office,” said Keating Holland, CNN’s Polling Director.

Now why would that be? Why would Barack Obama be rated highly on leadership before he has the power to do anything? Is it Obama’s brilliant powers of insight such as we have to learn to “disagree without being disagreeable?” If anything, that statement shows Obama to be indecisive.

The CNN story says that Obama rates as highly as President Bush did immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The difference, of course, is that Bush actually did something to deserve that level of respect, Obama has not.

We can look at Barack Obama’s accomplishments in the Senate and see that he produced not one significant piece of legislation during his tenure. He did nothing for three years. On the campaign trail, he made promises about things he was going to do if he was elected President that he could have done as Senator, but did not. If he was true leader, he would have used his position in the Senate to at least attempt to make the kind of changes he discussed on the stump.

How in the world can anyone say that Obama is a “strong and decisive leader” when his record shows absolutely no examples of such leadership?

I’ll tell you how: the media is portraying him as a strong leader and people are accepting it at face value. Much, if not most, of what we think about the world comes from what we see in the news media. If the news media says the economy is rotten, as they did all during 2006 and 2007 when unemployment was at historical lows, many people are going to believe it. If the news media reports something with enough frequency, people are going to start accepting it as fact, regardless of whether it is or not.

We live in a world of intellectual laziness that mankind has never seen before. People are unwilling to spend a few minutes to do the research to discover the truth themselves. They won’t search the internet for Democrats’ positions about Iraq before the war started, instead believing the lie perpetuated by the liberal media that Bush–and he alone–completely fabricated the reasons for going to war. As untrue as that is, many people believe it, just as they believe that Obama is the greatest leader the world has ever known.

More highlights from the CNN poll:

• 76% of Americans say Barack Obama is a “strong and decisive leader” despite him never having accomplished a thing;
• 80% of Americans think that Obama “inspires confidence, can get things done and is tough enough to be president” despite him never having gotten anything done and flip-flopping repeatedly on issues crucial to American safety such as the Iraq War;
• Obama scores higher than Bush did in 2001 on “honesty, values, issues, management abilities and compassion” despite his prior granting of political favors to financial backers, his relationships with anti-American Jeremiah Wright and domestic terrorist William Ayers, his non-existent managerial achievements, and his puny charitable contributions even though he is multi-millionaire.

Barack Obama is a marketing creation. Nothing more.

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Every day the liberal news media runs sob stories about people losing their homes to foreclosure.  We are constantly being bombarded with stories of foreclosures with the underlying premise that the economy is solely to blame.  There are a couple of things the talking heads aren’t telling you.

• Most foreclosures up to this point have involved subprime borrowers.  These are people who never should have gotten loans in the first place, and wouldn’t have if Democrats weren’t pressuring lenders to make loans to unworthy borrowers.
• Many people who are going into foreclosure aren’t doing so because they can’t pay their mortgage, but are doing so because they don’t want to pay their mortgage any longer.

MSNBC Voluntary Foreclosure Article

Above is an article from MSNBC that mentions the fact that some people are walking away from their mortgages voluntarily.  The author introduces us to one sickening deadbeat by the name of Diane Shackle.  It seems that Ms. Shackle, a single cocktail waitress, decided that while she could still make the payment on the condominium she purchased for $191,000, it caused too much stress on her and prevented her from spending money on other things.  So, she quit making her mortgage payments and moved into a $750 a month apartment.

Isn’t that what this deadbeat should have done in the first place?  A cocktail waitress with no money for a down payment takes on a $191,000 interest-only mortgage and she walks away from her obligations.  How could people not see this kind of thing coming?

Also, if she could still make the monthly payments but struggled to afford other things, could she not have gotten a second job for a while?  I think that is what most responsible people would have done.

Democrats encourage voluntary foreclosures because they created laws in some states prohibiting mortgage companies from coming after other assets of deadbeats in the event of a foreclosure.  What do these deadbeats really have to lose?  Their credit scores will be blemished for a few years.  But do you think they care?  They have no pride and don’t believe in following through on a deal, so do they really care that their credit worthiness will be damaged for a while?  No.  They are just holding their hands out waiting for the DFL to come along with a bailout package so they can all live in homes they never could have afforded at taxpayer expense.

Luckily for the deadbeats, the DFL is salivating at the chance of showering them with taxpayer money come January.  The Democratic Party encourages and rewards stupidity and irresponsibility every chance it gets.

Democrat Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts was interviewed by CBS News’ Lesley Stahl on last night’s edition of “60 Minutes”.  Barney Frank demonstrated to the world that he is a true moron.  He exhibited the faulty logic typical of liberalism to a stomach-turning degree.  Not surprisingly, Lesley Stahl never pursued it.  A real journalist would have torn Frank to shreds with the ammunition he provided.

Rep. Frank is the head of the House Financial Services Committee which oversees the entire financial industry including the banking, securities, insurance, and housing industries.  The interview dealt mostly with the current subprime mortgage crisis and home foreclosures which, interestingly, Barney Frank is largely responsible for causing.  Lesley Stahl never really mentioned that.

60 Minutes Article And Video Of Barney Frank Interview

As the piece opened, it was very flattering of Rep. Frank.  It made me gag.  It started with:

Barney Frank has been called the “smartest guy in Congress,” which is lucky for us since he works on some of the thorniest issues around.

Frank has been called the “smartest guy in Congress” by whom?  Himself?  Other Democrat morons?  Nobody else could call a massive idiot like Barney Frank “smart” given what he has done.  Frank was one of the leaders who blocked Republican efforts to put stricter regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the early 2000s to prevent Fannie and Freddie from collapsing–which they inevitably did.  First, a little history lesson.

In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration was pressuring Fannie Mae to make loans to people with poor credit and low incomes in an effort to increase minority home ownership.  Fannie Mae was run by a Democrat by the name of Franklin Raines.  He made a reported $100 million in a few years time while leading the government-backed corporation during a period when it committed massive accounting fraud.  Being a loyal Democrat, Raines was more than happy to oblige the requests of the puppet master, Bill Clinton.  Making high-risk loans was good for Raines, too, since it put a lot of money into his pocket.

Home ownership is a good goal for America.  Home ownership by means of giving loans to people who can’t pay the money back isn’t wise.  In the late 1990s, people were warning that Fannie was taking on too much risk by becoming such a large player in the subprime mortgage market.

NY Times Article From Sept. 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people…

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

In 1999–nine years before Fannie Mae collapsed–people were warning that the quasi-governmental agency was taking on too much risk and posed a huge financial danger to the taxpayers of this country (most of whom vote Republican).

So what did Barney Frank do?  Rep. Frank and his Democrat colleagues did everything they could to prevent the Bush administration and Republicans from imposing stricter regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prevent a catastrophic failure from happening.  Let’s look at just how “smart” Barney Frank is, shall we?

NY Times Article From Sept. 11, 2003

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

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

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken.

In 2003, the Bush administration and Republicans were pushing for more regulations to prevent the collapse which occurred a few months ago.  What did “smart” Barney Frank think of this?  From the same article:

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

Barney Frank said that there was no problem with Fannie and Freddie.  It turns out that there were big problems with those two taxpayer-backed corporations.  They failed, costing the hard-working taxpayers billions!

Obviously, Barney Frank was wrong.  He isn’t smart.  He’s an idiot.  And so is Lesley Stahl who opened her piece by saying that it is lucky for us that Rep. Frank has been called the “smartest guy in Congress”.

Is it lucky for us that Barney Frank blocked Republican efforts to prevent Fannie and Freddie from collapsing?  Is that Lesley Stahl’s idea of good fortune?

The Stahl piece went on to briefly mention Rep. Frank’s relationship with a male prostitute and the fact that a male prostitution ring was being run out of Frank’s home in 1989.  Amazing how he had no knowledge of that…

The entire interview with Barney Frank is a showcase of idiocy and the mental disorder of liberalism.  More to come in the next post.

Meanwhile, why don’t you share a link to this blog with your friends?

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We are starting a political forum soon and welcome intelligent debate on the issues of the day.  Please stop back soon. 

I was taken aback when I read the following headline from CNN’s website a few minutes ago:

CNN Story

Dow up more than 300 points on Obama comments on economy, hopes for automakers

So I read the story, then checked with Google News to verify CNN’s claim that Obama’s comments sent the market soaring.  The CNN story is as misleading as a headline can possibly get.  The story opens with this:

Stocks surged Monday on signs that the automakers will be able to avoid bankruptcy and President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed stimulus plan.

According to a Reuters news story, the White House stated this morning that a deal aiding the auto industry was “very likely” today.  So, which bit of news is responsible for moving the market?  Is Obama’s “plan”, which is nothing more than socialism and centralized planning, responsible for sending the stock market higher today, or is President Bush’s release that a bailout was likely the cause of the jump in the market?

Let’s look at the facts.  President-elect Obama’s (oh, God, how I hate saying that) plan isn’t new.  He’s been talking about it for weeks now.  Not only that, but it isn’t much different than what he said on the campaign trail.  This is from November 25th, 2008:

WSJ Article

(Obama) ticked off a list of priorities that included: creating 2.5 million jobs, and spending on roads, bridges, schools and clean-energy programs.

That is pretty much the exact same thing Obama said this past weekend.  This isn’t news, it was already known.  Thus, it is highly unlikely that Obama’s comments moved the market today.

So we are left with the other bit of news that an auto industry bailout deal was likely.  Is it big news?  Yes, absolutely.  Is it big enough to cause the stock market to jump?  Yes.  Is the Obama economic plan discussed this weekend, which we already knew about long ago, big news?  No.  We already knew about it.  Is it likely to be responsible for moving the market this morning?  Since we already knew about it weeks, if not months, ago, no, it is not likely.

This is just another sickening example of the media in Obama’s corner promoting him and his socialist economic plan.  I did not read a single news story mentioning the fact that the stock market dropped for two consequtive days starting the day after Obama was elected.  But, I’ve read several stories trying to link any increase in the stock market to Obama and his plans.  The news media is not being honest.

It is true that the market jumped immediately after Obama announced that Timothy Geithner was his pick for Secretary of the Treasury.  But that is the only time that anything Obama said has moved the market.  The only time.

Every time the market goes up, liberal journalists will portray Obama as being responsible.  Even if he didn’t do or say anything, the media will link every daily increase in the stock market to Obama and his “glorious plans”.  But when the market goes down as a result of something Obama does or says, they won’t dare link him to the decline.  The last thing they want you to know is the truth.