Bailout nonsense

By Steven E. Landsburg, a professor of economics at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York

We are embarking on the most radical transformation of the American economy since the New Deal, committing hundreds of billions in taxpayer money to save banks and other financial institutions from the consequences of their own bad investments. This, we are told, is the cost of averting a crisis. But I sure wish someone would explain to me exactly what crisis we're trying to avert.

What's clear is that a bunch of financial institutions have made mistakes and lost money. What's unclear is why anyone (other than the owners and managers) should care. People make mistakes and lose money all the time. Restaurants fail, grocery stores fail, gas stations fail. People pick the wrong stocks, they buy the wrong cars, and they marry the wrong spouses without turning to the Treasury for bailouts.

So what's special about banks? According to what I keep reading, it's that without banks, nobody can borrow, and the economy grinds to a halt. Well, let's think about that. Banks don't lend their own money; they lend other people's (their depositors' and their stockholders'). Just because the banks disappear doesn't mean the lenders will. Borrowers will still want to borrow and lenders will still want to lend. The only question is whether they'll be able to find each other.

That's one reason I feel squeamish about the official pronouncements we've been getting. They tell us bank failures will make it hard to borrow but never that bank failures will make it hard to lend. But every borrower is paired with a lender, so it's odd to state the problem so asymmetrically. This makes me suspect that the official pronouncers have not entirely thought this thing through.

In the 1930s, a wave of bank failures did make it hard for borrowers and lenders to find each other, and the consequences were drastic. But times have changed in at least two relevant ways. First, the disaster of the 1930s was caused not just by bank failures, but by a 30% contraction of the money supply, which is something today's Fed can easily prevent. Second, as any user of match.com can tell you, the technology for finding partners has improved since then. When a firm wants to raise capital, why can't it just sell bonds over the web? Or issue new stock? Or approach one of the hedge funds that seem to be swimming in cash? Or borrow abroad?

I know, I know, the rest of the world is in crisis too. But surely in the vast global economy, it should be possible to find someone capable of introducing a lender to a borrower. (Note that I'm not talking about going to foreign lenders, though that's another option. I'm just talking about the same American borrower and American lender who would have found each other through Bear Stearns finding each other through Barclays instead.)

In other words, I'm not sure these big Wall Street banks are really necessary, and I'm not sure we'd miss them much if they were gone. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but if so, I think it should be incumbent on Messrs. Bernanke, Paulson and above all Bush to explain what it is.

Source

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ELSEWHERE



Bailout marks Karl Marx's comeback : "In his Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, Karl Marx proposed 10 measures to be implemented after the proletariat takes power, with the aim of centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state. Proposal Number Five was to bring about the `centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.' If he were to rise from the dead today, Marx might be delighted to discover that most economists and financial commentators, including many who claim to favor the free market, agree with him."

Why I oppose the bailout, by US Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN): "Economic freedom means the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. The decision to give the federal government the ability to nationalize almost every bad mortgage in America interrupts this basic truth of our free market economy. Republicans improved this bill but it remains the largest corporate bailout in American history, forever changes the relationship between government and the financial sector, and passes the cost along to the American people. I cannot support it."

A damn good defeat: "There is no disputing that financial firms have too much unidentified and unpriced, semi-performing assets on their books. To regain access to the credit and capital markets, all these firms have to do is identify and price those assets. The resulting write-downs will trim the share price and capital will once again flow in. It's that simple, kind of. You see, these firms don't just want access to the capital markets again, they want it at the share price they can command with those overvalued assets on their books. Hey, I want $30K for my `92 Accord with 200k miles on it, too, but I'm not holding my breath. The Billionaire Bailout scheme, in a round-about fashion, is to force you to take on these overvalued assets at book value or, in most cases, higher thus replacing ??? with cash on the books of financial firms. When the scheme fell apart this afternoon, the stock market resumed its one-and-only function: discovering the share price at which firms can access capital markets."

Economic laws of conservation: "One of the economic broad principles that I am familiar with is that, while the market can be wrong, you (whoever you are) are almost certainly unable reliably to do better than the market. Claims that the government will probably recoup its investment and even profit violate this principle. Another of the economic broad principles that I am familiar with is that the market works by no other means than rewarding wise investment and punishing foolish investment. That is how it works. A more general broad principle, upon which this relies, is that you get more of what you reward. The bailout violates this principle as well. Miron, and other economists who have spoken out against the bailout, have tended to make arguments that I find comprehensible and persuasive, because they appeal to broad economic principles that I am familiar with and have long since accepted. Those who have spoken out in favor of the bailout - well, for one thing, rather than see actual arguments from them I have seen appeals to authority, appeals to hidden knowledge, sky-is-falling warnings that have no actual content but serve merely to shift the reader into panic mode, vehement attacks on those who disagree, and the like".

If you're going to bailout anybody... : "It is not clear whether there would be a financial catastrophe if the bailout were not passed. Credit is still available; millions of people are still using their credit cards. Businesses are still getting loans. However, it is true that many firms can't obtain funds except at quite high risk premiums, or not at all. The credit markets are somewhat stuck, but maybe that is because lenders are waiting for the government to act. Any plan that bails out banks and mortgages is going to favor some at the expense of others. Many who have been dutifully paying their mortgage payments, or fully own their homes, will not get any aid. If there is a major liquidity problem, and if government has to step in to prevent financial chaos, the egalitarian solution would be to provide money to everyone equally. Money to the people!"

The end of the US financial system as we know it? : "A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House. . Of course, this scenario will lose more Republican votes. But insiders tell me President Bush will take Secretary Paulson's advice and sign that kind of legislation."

Bush signs sprawling spending bill: "President Bush on Tuesday signed a sprawling, stopgap spending bill to keep the government running for the next 12 months. The president's move, which came on the last day of the government's budget year, was expected even though the measure spends more money and contains more pet projects than he would have liked. The legislation is one of the few bills this election year that simply had to pass. The $630 billion-plus spending bill wraps together a record Pentagon budget with aid for automakers and natural disaster victims, and increased health care funding for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The measure also lifts a quarter-century ban on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a victory for Bush and fellow Republicans."

UK: We'll protect bank savings: "`Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told the BBC that he will do "whatever it takes" to protect people's savings.Moves to guarantee bank deposits up to 50,000 pounds - compared with the current 35,000 limit - are expected shortly.He declined to offer an unlimited guarantee, as has happened in Ireland, but pointed out the government had not let any UK depositor lose out. .. The Irish government has made an emergency decision to guarantee the safety of all deposits in six of its main savings institutions for two years."

You can trust us with your personal data? "Britain's MI6 intelligence service is investigating how a camera holding sensitive information about al-Qaida suspects came to be lost by one of its agents and then sold on eBay, police said on Tuesday. `We can confirm we seized a camera after a member of the public reported it,' said a statement by police in Hertfordshire, north of London, after the camera was handed into a police station."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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A small meditation for the Jewish New Year

Although I am an atheist, I am acutely aware of the vast influence that the New Testament has had on my thinking. And I regret not one jot or tittle of that. Whenever I follow the teachings of Christ (alas far too seldom) I get a blessing -- sometimes very rapidly.

I also however have great respect for the Old Testament and often read it with pleasure. One book however stands out for its difficulty: The book of Job. However you explain it, the fact of the matter is that the God of Israel placed great burdens and afflictions on a good and holy man.

If I were a Rabbi, I would see that as a metaphor for the relationship between the God of Israel and his people as a whole. The God of the Jews has given his chosen people enormous gifts but in his wisdom he has also given them one enormous handicap: political stupidity. Israel and the Jews have only ONE powerful friend in the world: American evangelical Christians. And yet Jews generally despise them. Through the despicable Abraham Foxman, they do all they can to thwart evangelical Christians and they vote in droves for the antisemitic Democratic Party, the party that also despises evangelical Christians.

Now that seems to me to be a curse from on high but I speak from a particular perspective. What Jews do politically is virtually inexplicable from an Anglo-Saxon viewpoint but to the rest of the world it may not be so at all.

This is not the time or place to spell it out in historical detail, but a large element in Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism is the way they value alliances. When Anglo-Saxons go to war they generally do so as "Allies". They in fact refer to their side of a conflict as "the Allies" or "Allied forces". They have an instinctive appreciation of the importance of friends, banal though that may seem. There is much egotism in the world that causes both people and nations to "go it alone" at times but that is something that seems to be missing in Anglo-Saxon thinking.

And that seeking of alliances even overcomes old wounds. There is only one country that has burnt Washington to the ground and that is Britain -- in 1812. But, despite that bad start, the commonality of attitudes and values has prevailed and the USA and Britain have fought alongside one-another repeatedly since then.

Why cannot Jews do the same? Christians were once a plague upon Jewry but they are not so now. Both fundamentalist Christians and Jews want to see Jews in Zion but very few Jews will grasp the hand of friendship that is held out to them by the Christians. That blindspot does seem to me very much like a curse from on high.

There are of course some Jews who fight the good fight: Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Jeff Jacoby, Dennis Prager etc. But on some accounts 88% of Jews voted for the Islam-loving Democratic party at the 2006 mid-terms -- so the curse is pervasive despite that.

There has always been antisemitism on both sides of politics but at least since Karl Marx it has always had its principal home on the Left. Jews can remember conservative businessmen keeping them out of country clubs but forget that Hitler was a socialist. One should be able to expect better than that from a generally clever people. In the late 19th century, the British Conservative party made a Jew (Disraeli) their Prime Minister. About 50 years later the socialist Hitler incinerated 6 million Jews. Can anybody see a difference there?

In 1939 Germany went to war with a powerful ally on its side: Soviet Russia. The German Panzern that stormed through France were powered by Soviet fuel. Germany later however turned on its ally, with disastrous results for itself. One hopes that Jews will not similarly antagonize THEIR best ally. Abe Foxman, take note.

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Jewish Left Wins, Jews and Israel Lose

by Dennis Prager

For decades most of the organized left has fought against Republicans and conservatives more than against the world's greatest evils. During the Cold War, starting in the late 1960s, one heard little if anything from the left about the evils of Communism or of Communist societies such as the Soviet Union or Communist China. But one heard a great deal about the evils of American anti-Communists; Ronald Reagan was vilified much more than Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

But last week, a new line seems to have been crossed. The organized Jewish left -- i.e., left-wing Jewish organizations that claim to be committed to the welfare of Jews -- made it clear that even in the fight against the greatest enemy of the Jewish people, the Jewish left prefers to fight what it considers an even greater enemy -- conservatives and Republicans.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who has repeatedly called for the annihilation of Israel and who denies the Holocaust, came to speak at the United Nations. The day before he was scheduled to speak, Jewish organizations across the religious and political spectrum had organized a "Stop Iran" rally at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza across from the UN. They had invited Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and then invited Republican vice-presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The intent was to maximize publicity for the anti-Iran cause, the most important Jewish concern (and arguably the most important world concern) today. With Clinton and Palin present, the world press would cover the anti-Iran rally, and the Jewish community could show the world and America that this was one cause that knew no politics -- the most prominent female Democrat and the most prominent female Republican would both lend their names and prestige to this rally.

However, the moment that Clinton learned that the organizers had invited Palin, she withdrew. For Clinton, giving the other most popular woman politician in America publicity was unacceptable -- even among New York Jews, one of the steadfast liberal and Democratic groups in America. The near collapse of the Stop Iran rally was of less consequence to Clinton than denying Palin a public platform.

Not many were surprised by Clinton's action. What was alarming was the realization that for much of the Jewish left -- not leftists who happen to be Jews and for whom the welfare of the Jewish people is not particularly significant, but left-wing Jews who claim to care deeply about Jewish survival -- fighting Palin is of greater importance than fighting Ahmadinejad.

Left-wing Jews and Jewish organizations put intense pressure on the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to cancel the invitation to Palin. And the pressure worked. As the liberal editorial page of New York's major Jewish newspaper The Jewish Week put it: "But somehow, a big-tent cause like Iran as a terrorist power seeking nuclear arms has become so politicized within our community that Monday's rally was more about the non-presence of Gov. Sarah Palin than about the very real presence at the UN of a Holocaust denier whose goal is to destroy our way of life."

Yet, in a rare move, publishing an entire speech that was never given, Ha'aretz, Israel's equivalent to The New York Times in its prestige and in its liberal politics, published the speech that Palin would have given. In Israel, liberal and even many left-wing Jews know that Iran is a greater threat to Israel than American conservatives.

The Palin speech was so good it should be read by every American concerned with Israel's survival. And it was so nonpartisan that it praised Clinton for being at the rally. To say that Palin -- who has the American, Alaskan and Israeli flags in her Juneau office -- is a better friend of the Jews and Israel than much of the American Jewish left sounds odd only to Jewish leftists.

But the Jewish left acts as if it fears and hates her more than it fears and hates Ahmadinejad. That is why within days of her nomination Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., announced that "John McCain's decision to select a vice presidential running mate that endorsed Pat Buchanan for president in 2000 is a direct affront to all Jewish Americans. Pat Buchanan is a Nazi sympathizer with a uniquely atrocious record on Israel. . It is frightening that John McCain would select someone one heartbeat away from the presidency who supported a man who embodies vitriolic anti-Israel sentiments."

Wexler's statement was false: Palin supported Steve Forbes, not Buchanan. And associating Palin with Nazi or anti-Israel sympathies is morally loathsome, not to mention weakens the struggle against real anti-Semites.

For left-wing Jewish organizations and their supporters -- as opposed to many rank and file liberal Jews -- the real fight is against Republicans and especially Christian conservatives (as a community, the Jews' best friends) more than against a nuclear Iran.

After the cancellation of Palin, a left-wing Jewish organization that was influential in opposing Palin's appearance, an organization called J Street, on whose Board of Advisors sits the executive director of MoveOn.org, headlined on its website: "We Won!" That is indeed the case. The Jewish left did win. Which is why the Jews and Israel lost.

Source

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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SHANA TOVA

To my Jewish readers. And may the New Year bring shalom to us all, Jew and goy alike.

WHOSE MESS, CONGRESSMAN FRANK?

By Jeff Jacoby



"The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it." That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, `Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.' "

In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.

Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing Wall Street has its share of private-sector culprits -- many of whom have been learning lately just how pitiless the private sector's discipline can be -- they weren't the ones who "got us into this mess." Barney Frank's talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so -- or else.

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. In 1977 Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." In 1995, under President Clinton, the law was made even more stringent. Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of the questionable mortgages that ensued. Some state and local governments added pressure of their own.

All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. "Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor," the Fed's guidelines instructed. Applicants lacking sufficient savings to cover a down payment and closing costs should be allowed to rely instead on "gifts, grants, or loans from relatives, nonprofit organizations, or municipal agencies." Lenders were even directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as "valid income sources" to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.

As long as housing prices kept rising -- and with millions of otherwise unqualified borrowers adding to demand, they did -- the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn't take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. "What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?" I asked in this space in 1995. "Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?"

Not Barney Frank. And yet his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis." When the White House warned of "systemic risk for our financial system" unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Now that the bubble has burst and the "systemic risk" is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: "The private sector got us into this mess." Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one likely suspect in the nearest mirror.

Source

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The bailout: McCain is the Man who Got Action

He secured the compromises without which there was no way that House Republicans would have supported the bill

Weisman's article sums up the objectives of both McCain and Obama:

"McCain has been trying to help the House guys, trying to get their ideas into the broader bill," said a senior Republican Senate aide. "If McCain can do that, he can bring 50 to 100 House Republicans to the bill. That would be a big damn deal." . One Republican in the room said it was clear that the Democrats came into the meeting with a "game plan" aimed at forcing McCain to choose between the administration and House Republicans.

If Democrats did succeed in forcing McCain to choose between House Republicans and President Bush McCain choose wisely. President Bush is effectively a lame duck and without the support of House Republicans John McCain cannot be elected President. But more to the point, without McCain's action to stop the runaway freight train that the Obama-Dodd-Frank-Paulson bill had become, the bill might very well have failed to gain passage in the House causing further panic in world financial markets.

In an orchestrated attempt to showcase Obama's leadership ability, it's clear that instead, Obama only served to foster division by stoking the unease House GOP leaders felt over being pressured to sign off on what they knew was a bad bill. Weisman described Obama's participation at the White House meeting as a "hectoring performance" certainly not one designed to win over converts to the Democrat plan.

McCain's performance was much more presidential. Instead of doing all the talking, he LISTENED to what House GOP leaders were saying instead of trying to browbeat them into a bad agreement. And in the end, McCain is motivated by lifelong principles dedicated to protecting the taxpayer from big government boondoggles which is exactly what the Democrat plan pushed at the White House had become. If the current compromise passes, as many insist it must to avoid financial disaster, there will be only one man to thank: John McCain!

Much more here

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ELSEWHERE

A stupid priest who is so far out of his depth he is drowning "The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has spoken up in support of Karl Marx, defending key aspects of his critique of capitalism. Dr Williams warns that in the face of the credit crisis, the financial world needs new regulation and says that our society is running the risk of idolatry in its relationship with wealth. In an article in Friday's Spectator, Dr Williams compares today's debtors and financiers to the feckless young clerics and landowners described in the novels of Anthony Trollope. He writes: "Individuals find that their own personal financial decisions and calculations have nothing to do with what is happening to their resources, in a process for which a debt is simply someone else's wholly disposable asset."

No Funds for Squirrely ACORN: "Given that the bailout bill is largely agreed upon as a necessary "crap sandwich" that "sucks," it is worth noting that conservative outrage did succeed in stripping the most egregious pork from the bill- funds in an "affordable housing trust fund" that could have gone to Democrat-allied and often nefarious advocacy groups like ACORN. All possible proceeds from the sale of these toxic assets will now go toward the national debt, not to affordable housing groups that pressure politicians to pressure banks to offer risky loans to low-income families, so those families can get into mortgages they can't afford. Hmmm, doesn't that sound familiar? Unhappy with the revocation of another round of gorging at the government teat, ACORN is releasing angry press releases, which is at least one reason to smile"

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Newt gets it: Let the financiers sort themselves out

Republican Newt Gingrich: "You have an administration which, in my judgment, has lost its mind." And I agree wholeheartedly.

President Bush is so worried about his legacy - he is so afraid of being looked at as Herbert Hoover - that he is doing the very things that Hoover did: Intervene, intervene, intervene. He should do what Ronald Reagan did in 1981 and 1982 and 1987: Let the market play it out.

From the Atlantic Journal-Constitution, Gingrich wants Hank Paulson canned and Gingrich said, "They may have to, in the end, tolerate some of this. Because in the end, you have the Democrats desperate for socialism now. You have an administration which, in my judgment, has lost its mind. That gives you two big elements. And you have Senate Republicans desperate to go along. I'm just being truly candid. Because I think the country ought to know what the pressures really are like.

"And you've got the House Republicans and John McCain prepared to stand on as much principle [as possible] - but in the end, I don't think they're going to be prepared to do nothing. Because they understand that next week, as long as the current situation. stays the way it is, you're going to have a genuine credit crisis."

Either Republicans start behaving like conservatives or they can kiss it all off. Look for the return oif the '70s and it ain't very pretty.

Source

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Replenishing ACORN's Account: Keeping the Housing Mess Going

Like me the WSJ thinks it's outrageous that the Democrats are trying to find money in the bailout to keep their friends in ACORN well nourished:

Acorn has promoted laws like the Community Reinvestment Act, which laid the foundation for the house of cards built out of subprime loans. Thus, we'd be funneling more cash to the groups that helped create the lending mess in the first place.

This isn't the first time this year that Democrats have tried to route money for fixing the housing crisis into the bank accounts of these community activist groups. The housing bill passed by Congress in July also included a tax on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to raise an estimated $600 million annually in grants for these lobbying groups. When Fannie and Freddie went under, the Democrats had to find a new way to fill the pipeline flowing tax dollars into the groups' coffers.

This is a crude power grab in a time of economic crisis. Congress should insist that every penny recaptured from the sale of distressed assets be dedicated to retiring the hundreds of billions of dollars in public debt that will be incurred, or passed back to taxpayers who will ultimately underwrite the cost of the bailout.

Update from Clarice Feldman: Tom Maguire catches how outrageous the Dodd payoff plan to ACORN is:

Jim Lindgren points out multiple problems with Chris Dodd's original draft. My only reassurance - the current plan has moved beyond that. I had derided the Dodd approach to equity stakes last week but Lindgren has more trashing from a different direction.

And his insight on the housing slush fund is an eye-opener -- the original Dodd language called for 20% of the profit on each sale to be diverted to the Dem slush fund; this is far different from 20% of *net* profits. In a net profit scenario, losses on some sales would offset gains on others. Under Dodd, any profit is immediately subject to diversion, regardless of whether there are other, greater losses. That is not taxpayer protection. What it is is absurd

Source. More on ACORN here

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They've Reached a Deal on Bailout

House and Senate negotiators have reached tentative agreement on a financial rescue plan after a marathon Capitol negotiating session that started Saturday afternoon and stretched into early Sunday morning. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said their "breakthrough" still had to be "committed to paper," a process that was expected to continue through the night. "We have something verbal," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.).

Republican Whip Roy Blunt, the chief negotiator for House Republicans, said he was "looking forward to what we're going to see on paper" and was optimistic that it would be something House Republicans could support.

Said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: "We've been working very hard on this and we've made great progress toward a deal which will work and will be effective in the marketplace and effective for all Americans . . . .We've still got a lot to do to finalize it, but I think we're there." The plan would likely give Paulson a relatively free hand accessing the first $350 billion of the $700 billion he sought. It was not clear when the remaining $350 billion would become available, but Treasury apparently agreed that a future Congress could block its release though a joint resolution signed by the president.

The agreement would also include much greater oversight than the Bush administration had initially proposed; an opportunity for the government to take an equity share in the companies it helps, either through warrants or options to buy stock; and a provision limiting the compensation paid to executives of those companies.

To help win the support of House Republicans, the agreement also would likely include an option under which Paulson and future Treasury secretaries could choose to sell companies government-backed insurance to cover securities - thereby improving their value - rather than buy the assets as initially proposed.

A vote in the House could come as early as Monday seemed, Emanuel said.

Source. Much more here. It is rumored that ACORN misses out!

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ELSEWHERE

The last straw for South Africa: "A wave of alarm swept through middle-class South Africa last week as President Thabo Mbeki was sacked by the ruling African National Congress and replaced by Kgalema Motlanthe, who has already presided over sweeping cabinet changes. The new president is still remembered as a communist militant who urged that the country's youth be "taught to hate capitalism". The real winner in the coup against Mbeki is Jacob Zuma. He will lead the ANC into next April's election and is strongly backed by the powerful Communist party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, both of which favour radical left-wing policies. Polls show that business confidence has slumped to a seven-year low. There has long been considerable evidence of "white flight" to cities in Britain, Australia, America and New Zealand. It is estimated that up to 20% of South Africa's whites have emigrated since the advent of democracy in 1994. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Zuma's rise, coupled with nationwide power cuts and a continuing crime wave, has led to a further massive brain drain"

Americans Revealed To Have Lives on Friday Nights: "Ratings for last night's debate were average, by some counts lower than Bush-Kerry. Shouldn't be shocked, really; Americans have much better things to do on a Friday night in September - high school football, go out to the movies, hit the bars, splurge with their Friday paycheck coming in. The baseball playoffs are being set, the NL East and AL Central are still up for grabs, as is the NL wild card...

Anti US paranoia flares in EU over Irish vote : "FIRST it was the sheer ingratitude of the Irish, then it was the failure of the Dublin government to mount a successful yes campaign. Now Brussels has found a new explanation as to why Ireland voted down the European Union treaty in June - a CIA and Pentagon-backed plot, devised by American neoconservatives to weaken the EU. The European parliament wants an inquiry into whether Declan Ganley, the multi-millionaire chairman of the Libertas group that campaigned against the treaty, could be in the pockets of US defence and intelligence services. The calls have been led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the firebrand 1968 student leader turned Green MEP"

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Liberalism is an Addiction

by Burt Prelutsky

It occurred to me the other day that in spite of a bad back and his marriage vows, JFK chased everything in skirts; that Gary Hart allowed his libido to sink his political career; that even nerdy Jimmy Carter confessed to having lust in his heart, although nobody in recorded history has ever been so silly or sanctimonious as to suggest that lust resided anywhere above the belt; and that Bill Clinton, like a spooky version of Mr. Rogers, patiently explained to America's kids that oral sex isn't really sex.

With all that in mind, doesn't it strike you as hypocritical for the Democrats to get up in arms over a married mother of five running for the vice presidency? Doesn't it seem at least slightly absurd that the only sexual activity that liberals frown upon is the sort that actually leads to babies being born? ...

I'm certain that by this time most people have seen the photos of the American flags that were left for the trash collector after the Democratic convention in Denver. Even though I have a flag outside my front door and hate to think of a flag, the symbol of a nation that inspired my two sets of grandparents to travel 7,000 miles so I could be fortunate enough to be born an American, I wasn't as troubled by the photos as I would have been if they'd been misused after the Republican convention. Liberals, after all, are always insisting that they're as patriotic as conservatives, but I don't believe it. If they were, they'd respect the military far more than they do, they wouldn't nominate someone like Barack Obama and they certainly wouldn't keep saying how much America is despised around the world, while ignoring the fact that it's a badge of honor to be despised by the likes of Russia, China, Iran, Yemen, North Korea, Venezuela and the PLO. They would also acknowledge that there must be a darn good reason why millions of people who weren't as lucky as we were to be born in America are, literally in some cases, dying to come here.

So, when I see that the Democrats disrespected the flags, I understood that to them the flags were only cheap props like the balloons, the bunting, the confetti and those corny Greek columns. The real problem isn't that the left trashed a few flags, but that they keep trashing the country.

A friend of mine has come up with what I regard as a wonderful solution to the problem of leftist influence. She proposes that liberals be offered an incentive to leave the country, as they are constantly threatening to do whenever it appears that a Republican might be elected president. The sum she came up with is a million dollars per person That sounds like a lot until you realize that nowadays people casually toss around sums in the trillions when discussing federal budgets and deficits. Still, I think there is room for negotiation. The point is, these left-wing whiners would get a deal similar to the one the protagonist received in Edward Everett Hales's short story, "The Man Without a Country." Unlike Philip Nolan, though, they wouldn't be sentenced to spend the rest of their lives sailing the seas, but they would be denied the opportunity to ever set foot again on this sacred ground. Not even for a visit. Even if only a relatively small number of leftists accepted the deal, I, for one, would consider it money well spent.

Liberals have an impossible time defending their beliefs, which is why they rely on slogans and catch phrases, unfounded rumors and ad hominem attacks, on those who, like Sara Palin, think clearly and live according to Judeo-Christian principles.

The brains and values of left-wingers have decomposed to the point where they actually believe Keith Olbermann, Rosie O'Donnell and Chris Matthews make sense and that people like Whoopi Goldberg, Al Franken and Bill Maher, are funny. That is why I say that liberalism is an addiction -- and why, as with other addictions, I'd like to see it kicked. Kicked good and hard.

Source

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Palin and wolf hunting

A wildlife group's ad attacks Palin for supporting the shooting of wolves from airplanes. She does, but there's more to it than that. Killing a few wolves stops lots a caribou calves from being killed. What have the animal lovers got against caribou calves? No mercy for calves? Are some animals more equal than others? Maybe the animal lovers concerned think caribou are a type of vegetable. They seem dumb enough. Real animal lovers would SUPPORT Palin

A new ad from Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund shows the pursuit and shooting of a wolf from a small plane and tells viewers that Sarah Palin "actively promotes" such killings. It's true that she does, and in 2007 she offered $150 payments for anyone who brought the left forepaw of a wolf to state officials. The ad calls the practice "brutal and unethical" but doesn't tell the whole story.

* Alaskan officials call it "predator control," not aerial hunting, and use it to keep the populations of moose and caribou high for subsistence hunters.

* The program is limited to just 9 percent of the state's land mass, or five of 26 Department of Fish and Game districts.

* Far from being endangered, as they are in the Lower 48 states, gray wolves number between 7,000 and 11,000 in Alaska.

This TV spot isn't for the squeamish, especially not squeamish animal-lovers. Its visuals include sinister-looking photos of Gov. Sarah Palin juxtaposed with footage of a wolf trying to outrun an airplane, then being shot and writhing in pain. Finally we see a small plane taking off, a wolf carcass tied to one of its wing struts.

There's a lot of emotional huffing and puffing in the ad. It says "Sarah Palin actively promotes the brutal and unethical aerial hunting of wolves and other wildlife" and says she encourages "cruelty" and "champions ... savagery." But strip away the emotional characterization and we're left with a description of Palin's position that is essentially factually correct, though incomplete....

If you think the explanation above implies a more complicated landscape than the ad shows us, you're correct. In the first place, while gray wolves are listed as an endangered species in the Lower 48, and great efforts have been made to reintroduce them in some Western states, they are abundant in Alaska. Ron Clarke, assistant director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, says the state is home to between 7,000 and 11,000 of them. Wolf populations in Alaska have bounced back since the 1950s, when federal agents conducted an extensive poisoning and aerial shooting campaign; moose and caribou proliferated as a result, in some cases leading to severe degradation of their own habitats.

Second, it's not for nothing that wolves have acquired their big, bad reputations. Studies indicate that predators (wolves and bears) often take 70 percent to 80 percent of the moose and caribou that die each year in Alaska. Research by the state Department of Fish and Game shows that "a single wolf eats 12-13 moose in a typical year and/or 30-40 caribou, mostly calves."

More here

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Deal for Financial Bailout Disintegrates as Obama, McCain Look On: The fate of the Bush administration’s $700 billion Wall Street’s bailout package was thrown into doubt Thursday evening, after congressional leaders left a landmark White House summit on the economy hurling accusations at each other and declaring there was no deal. Congressional leaders continued into the evening negotiating the proposed bailout of the financial industry with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s participation, but the negotiators ended the night without a deal. The summit at the White House, which included Barack Obama and John McCain, was intended to be a consensus-building exercise - one of the final stops on the rocky road to approving the controversial rescue package. Congressional leaders just hours earlier had announced they had reached an agreement in principle on the rescue package. But as Obama and McCain left, officials and aides who had attended the meeting said the summit ended on a very low note. “This meeting ended bad - real bad,” one source told FOX News. Others described the tone as “angry” and “heated,” saying Democrats were upset with House Republicans in particular who would not drop their opposition to the administration’s proposal."

John Rosenberg has an interesting post on why the Democrats don't pass the "bailout" bill that they seem so heavily to favour. They do after all have a majority in both houses. Why, then, do they insist on Republicans joining in them in passing the bill? I think it is obvious that they know it is a bad bill and do not want to be saddled with the blame for it at election time.

Data security? Unknown in Britain: "Files containing the personal records of thousands of serving and former RAF staff have been stolen, the Ministry of Defence confirmed last night. Three computer hard drives storing the information were taken last Wednesday in a raid on a high-security area at the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency at RAF Innsworth, Gloucester. The agency provides support for about 900,000 current and former RAF personnel. The loss of the data comes in the same week as a disk containing the names and addresses of almost 11,500 teachers went missing in the post. The Government has already come under scrutiny for its data protection procedures since the details of 25 million child benefit recipients were lost in transit by a courier almost a year ago. Earlier this month, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, ordered an inquiry into the loss of a computer hard drive containing the details of up to 5,000 employees of the justice system."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Bailout Could Deepen Crisis, CBO Chief Says

Asset Sales May Lead to Write-Downs, Insolvencies, Orszag Tells Congress

The director of the Congressional Budget Office said yesterday that the proposed Wall Street bailout could actually worsen the current financial crisis. During testimony before the House Budget Committee, Peter R. Orszag -- Congress's top bookkeeper -- said the bailout could expose the way companies are stowing toxic assets on their books, leading to greater problems.

"Ironically, the intervention could even trigger additional failures of large institutions, because some institutions may be carrying troubled assets on their books at inflated values," Orszag said in his testimony. "Establishing clearer prices might reveal those institutions to be insolvent."

In an interview later yesterday, Orszag explained using the following example: Suppose a company has Asset X, whose value is recorded on the books as $100. Because of the current economic decline, Asset X's real value has dropped to $50. If the company takes part in the government bailout and sells Asset X for $50, the company has to report a $50 loss on its books. On a scale of millions of dollars, such write-downs could ruin a company. Such companies "look solvent today only because it's kind of hidden," Orszag said. "They actually are insolvent" already, he said.

In hearings on Capitol Hill so far this week, criticism of the bailout plan put forward by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has largely been restricted to the shape of the $700 billion proposal, how the money will be spent and what sort of oversight Treasury should have.

But Orszag yesterday questioned the wisdom of the plan itself, testifying that "it therefore remains uncertain whether the program will be sufficient to restore trust." In yesterday's interview, Orszag said, "The key question is: What are we buying and what are we paying for it?"

More here

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Bill Clinton Defends John McCain's Debate Decision-- Blames Dems For Meltdown!

ABC News' Nitya Venkataraman Reports: Former President Bill Clinton defended Sen. John McCain's request to delay the first presidential debate, saying McCain did it in "good faith" and pushed organizers to reserve time for economy talk during the debate if the Friday plans move forward.

Appearing on Good Morning America Thursday, Clinton told ABC News' Chris Cuomo that McCain's push to postpone the debate would only be a good political move if both candidates agreed. McCain announced on Wednesday that he would "suspend" his presidential campaign to come to Washington to help negotiate a financial bailout bill.

"We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates," Clinton said, adding that he was "encouraged" by the joint statement from McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. "You can put it off a few days the problem is it's hard to reschedule those things," Clinton said, "I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted -- I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that."

Also... During the interview Bill Clinton blamed the Democrats for blocking reform of the mortgage giants, via Patriot Room:

Going very much against the media meme that the current financial crisis is all George W. Bush and the Republicans' fault, Bill Clinton on Thursday told ABC's Chris Cuomo that Democrats for years have been "resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac"

True. President Bush warned about reforming Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae 17 times this year alone. John McCain's reform bill was blocked by dems in 2005. Thank you, Bill Clinton!

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And they accuse Republicans of being the party of big business!: "The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a $25bn package of low-cost loans to help hard-pressed carmakers and their suppliers finance plant modernisation at a time of restricted access to public capital -markets. The automotive loans are separate from the proposed $700bn bail-out for the banking sector, which is still being debated in Congress. The House approved the measure 370-58, setting the stage for Senate approval within days".

MURTHA SUED!... Innocent Haditha Marine Files Slander Charges Against Dem Leader: "A Marine Corps lance corporal from Pennsylvania has sued U.S. Rep. John Murtha, saying the Democrat lawmaker slandered him by saying he and other marines killed 24 Iraqis in Haditha in "cold blood." Justin Sharratt has filed the suit in federal court in Pittsburgh. In the lawsuit, Sharratt claims the comments Murtha made in 2006 about the Haditha killings also violated the Marine's constitutional rights to due process and presumption of innocence."

Another Grim Milestone For Democrats In Iraq- Election Law Passes Parliament: "Iraq's parliament overwhelmingly approved a provincial elections law Wednesday, overcoming months of deadlock and giving a boost to U.S.-backed national reconciliation efforts... U.S. officials have complained privately that Iraqi politicians have failed to take advantage of the sharp drop in violence - down 80 percent since last year, according to the U.S. military - to forge lasting power-sharing agreements. The legislation had been bogged down in a complex dispute between Arabs and Kurds over power sharing in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which Kurds seek to incorporate into their semiautonomous region. Lawmakers acknowledged the delay in passing the measure would make it difficult for the electoral commission to organize the vote and pushed back the deadline for it to be held until Jan. 31, 2009."

McCain campaign on the financial crisis: "At today's cabinet meeting, John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan. John McCain simply urged that for any proposal to enjoy the confidence of the American people, stressing that all sides would have to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus for a solution that protects taxpayers. However, the Democrats allowed Senator Obama to run their side of the meeting. That did not work as the meeting quickly devolved into a contentious shouting match that did not seek to craft a bipartisan solution. At this moment, the plan that has been put forth by the Administration does not enjoy the confidence of the American people as it will not protect that taxpayers and will sacrifice Main Street in favor of Wall Street. The bottom line is that as of tonight, there are not enough Republican or Democrat votes for the current plan. However, we are still optimistic that a bipartisan solution will be found. Republicans and Democrats want a deal that will protect the taxpayers."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Oh My God, Sarah Palin Might Be ... Normal?? Gasp!

Saw this YouTube at Politico - which is sounding more and more like Obama Central everyday.

Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric, the first portion of which airs tonight, won't give Republicans any reassurance that she's ready for prime time. It will, however, reassure McCain aides that they're following the right course of action by keeping her shielded.

I honestly think the media just continues to parade its elitism as regards Palin and doesn't understand her grassroots appeal at all. Jonathan Martin:

She is what she is -- not a seasoned politician who knows how to dodge every question. It's bracing but it also could be spun as normal.

Yeah, it could also be that, you know, she is normal and it doesn't have to be spun. Just think! People might actually like seeing someone that's normal in Washington for a change. (insert collective media shudder here)

Another note, when you start thinking that it's a crime for someone or something to be "normal," or that it's an impossibility, ... maybe you're the one with the problem? Ya think?



Source

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Paulson just didn't have a clue

By Anatole Kaletsky, a prominent British economics writer

THE Emperor has no clothes. If you want to know why American capitalism is on the brink of disaster, but also want to understand what will save it, then log on to the C-Span congressional website and watch the interrogations of Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, by the Senate and House banking committees.

Until last week, I was in a minority of one in arguing that Mr Paulson was personally responsible for suddenly turning the painful but manageable credit crunch that had been grinding away 18 months in the background of the US economy into a global catastrophe. Mr Paulson's appearances on Capitol Hill, marked by the characteristic Bush-era combination of arrogance and incompetence, are turning my once-outlandish view into conventional wisdom: Henry Paulson is to finance what Donald Rumsfeld was to military strategy, Dick Cheney to geopolitics and Michael Chertoff to flood defence.

Mr Paulson may be a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, but as US Treasury Secretary he does not know what he is doing. His recent blunders, starting with the "rescue" of Fannie Mae, have triggered unintended consequences around the world, resulting in the death-spiral of financial values. But last Friday Mr Paulson outdid even these Rumsfeldian achievements, when he demanded $700 billion from Congress for a "comprehensive and fundamental" solution to the global financial crisis, without apparently having any idea of what he would actually do.

The good news - before I return to the perils of Mr Paulson - is that his blunders no longer matter very much. There will still be a huge US government bank bailout, which will probably avert a disastrous slump in the US and global economies. But because Mr Paulson has lost the political initiative, this bailout will now be led by the Democratic leadership in Congress and will be structured around its priorities - relief from mortgage foreclosures, restrictions on bankers' pay and big government shareholdings in US banks. For President Bush it is a disaster, dashing his last faint hope of having a tangible achievement to his name before he leaves office.

How did things come to such a pass? When Mr Paulson announced his $700 billion "plan" last Friday, everybody in the financial world (myself included) heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, it seemed, the US Government was going to do whatever it takes to stabilise the world financial system. The universal assumption was that Mr Paulson would present a detailed plan of action over the weekend, putting a safety net under the value of homes, mortgages and related assets.
Yet all that appeared by Saturday evening was a three-page legislative outline, with no hint of the mechanisms to be used. The only substantive clause in the draft was a swaggering demand for untrammelled power: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to this Act are non-reviewable and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

When further details of the Paulson plan failed to appear on Sunday it was assumed that the details were being untangled in late-night political negotiations. When there was still no plan on Monday, the view was that Mr Paulson must be holding back the details for his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee the following day. But then, to everyone's astonishment, Mr Paulson turned up to the committee on Tuesday morning with only the briefest opening statement, which simply repeated what he had already said the week before: the sky was falling and the only way to stop it was to give him authority over $700 billion in public money, to be spent in unspecified ways.

And suddenly the sky did fall down - not on the world economy, but on Mr Paulson. Consider the reactions from American politicians, including Republicans: "Stunning and unprecedented in its lack of detail"... "a $700 billion blank cheque to Wall Street"... "neither workable nor comprehensive"... "foolish waste of massive taxpayer funds"... "eerily similar to the rush to war in Iraq". Best of all was John McCain's comment: "When we're talking about a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, `trust me' just isn't good enough."

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The Left have been shrieking for years about how evil it is to view women as sex objects. But portraying Sarah Palin as a dim bimbo is fine, apparently. See here

Democrat dummy can't tell the difference between animals and people: "Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because "anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."

Leftist racism: "As an African-American, I have never supported a Democratic presidential candidate. Why? Because I have always believed that the Democratic Party's and the liberal media's marked propensity to stigmatize the Republican Party as racist is a disingenuous attempt to deflect any criticism about the Democratic Party's own shortcomings in this regard. Much of what the DNC and the liberal media say about its commitment to stamp out racism in America rings hollow, because they never miss an opportunity to fan the flames of bigotry. If one needs proof about where racism lies, whether consciously or not, all one has to do is to take a close look at some of Joe Biden's comments in recent years."

Coalition Has Entered `Endgame' in Iraq, Gates Says : "Amid an 80-percent drop in violence and with further withdrawals of U.S. forces in sight, the coalition in Iraq has reached the "endgame," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. "I believe we have now entered that endgame - and our decisions today and in the months ahead will be critical to regional stability and our national security interests for years to come," he told the Senate Armed Service Committee during a hearing on Iraq and Afghanistan. Highlighting success in Iraq are reductions in U.S. casualties and overall violence, and the handover of Anbar province this month to Iraqi authority. Anbar, the 11th of 18 provinces now under Iraqi control, once was a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency and the scene of some of the war's most contentious fighting."

A good time to kick the United Nations out of New York?: "Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo on Tuesday introduced legislation aimed at that: "The legislation is being introduced amid incessant anti-American and anti-Jewish political grandstanding from the podium of the General Assembly."

Newt on Senator McCain's Decision to Suspend His Campaign to Forge an Agreement on the Financial Crisis: "Today john McCain showed what it meant to put country first. He put everything on the line to try to put together a bipartisan sizable economic package to replace the failed Paulson bailout package. This is the greatest single act of responsibility ever taken by a presidential candidate and rivals President Eisenhower saying, `I will go to Korea.' Every House and Senate Republican should join him in seeking the best ideas and the best solutions from across the country. This is the day the McCain-reform Republican Party began to truly emerge as a movement which puts country first, solutions first, and big change first."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Bush held firm on Iraq and got it right when all about him were wobbling

History will speak well of him

Now that even Barack Obama has acknowledged that President Bush's surge in Iraq has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams," maybe it's time the Democratic nominee gives some thought to how that success actually came about -- not just in Ramadi and Baghdad, but in the bureaucratic Beltway infighting out of which the decision to surge emerged.

Consider what confronted Mr. Bush in 2006. Following a February attack on a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq's sectarian violence began a steep upward spiral. The U.S. helped engineer the ouster of one Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, in favor of Nouri al-Maliki, an untested leader about whom the U.S. knew next to nothing. The "Sunni Awakening" of tribal sheiks against al Qaeda was nowhere in sight. An attempt at a minisurge of U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad failed dismally. George Casey, the American commander in Iraq, believed the only way the U.S. could "win" was to "draw down" -- a view shared up the chain of command, including Centcom Commander John Abizaid and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

From the State Department, Condoleezza Rice opposed the surge, arguing, according to Mr. Woodward, that "the U.S. should minimize its role in punishing sectarian violence." Senior brass at the Pentagon were also against it, on the theory that it was more important to ease the stress on the military and be prepared for any conceivable military contingency than to win the war they were fighting.

Handed this menu of defeat, Mr. Bush played opposite to stereotype by firing Mr. Rumsfeld and seeking advice from a wider cast of advisers, particularly retired Army General Jack Keane and scholar Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. The President also pressed the fundamental question of how the war could actually be won, a consideration that seemed to elude most senior members of his government. "God, what is he talking about?" Mr. Woodward quotes a (typically anonymous) senior aide to Ms. Rice as wondering when Mr. Bush raised the question at one meeting of foreign service officers. "Was the President out of touch?"

No less remarkably, the surge continued to face entrenched Pentagon opposition even after the President had decided on it. Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went out of his way to prevent General Keane from visiting Iraq in order to limit his influence with the White House.

The Pentagon also sought to hamstring General David Petraeus in ways both petty and large, even as it became increasingly apparent that the surge was working. Following the general's first report to Congress last September, Mr. Bush dictated a personal message to assure General Petraeus of his complete support: "I do not want to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded," Mr. Woodward reports the President as saying. In this respect, Mr. Bush would have been better advised to dictate that message directly to Admiral Mullen.

The success of the surge in pacifying Iraq has been so swift and decisive that it's easy to forget how difficult it was to find the right general, choose the right strategy, and muster the political will to implement it. It is also easy to forget how many obstacles the State and Pentagon bureaucracies threw in Mr. Bush's way, and how much of their bad advice he had to ignore, especially now that their reputations are also benefiting from Iraq's dramatic turn for the better.

More here

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Democrats' hair of the dog remedies

"The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it," said Barney Frank, which illustrates why conservatives often say liberals have a socialist bent.

Free market conservatives understand that many problems have been caused by government's officious intermeddling in the private sector. The subprime mortgage crisis is no exception. History has shown that liberal prescriptions don't work, but when they fail, liberals invariably not only deny responsibility for their do-gooder manipulation but also insist on even more government intrusion. Think of it as "the hair of the dog" remedy on steroids.

For example, many of our health care problems can be traced to increased government control and the reduction of market forces. Yet the liberal solution is full-blown nationalized health care. Never mind that it doesn't work anywhere in the world and always leads to waiting lines and inferior health care. Never mind that the United States has the best health care in the history of the world, notwithstanding admittedly serious problems.

Another example is Social Security. Instead of creating a trust fund segregated from general revenues, congressional liberals with an insatiable appetite for spending raided Social Security revenues from day one. The system has been one big Ponzi scheme funded by IOUs from one arm of government to another. Bill Clinton and Al Gore had the audacity to propose a "lockbox" to secure Social Security, when their ideological predecessors happily breached their promise for the original lockbox.

But what did liberals do when President Bush proposed that people be allowed to set a portion of their Social Security funds aside in private accounts? They called it a risky scheme to benefit Wall Street. Barack Obama is the latest in a long line of liberal demagogues to make this claim, but his ad on this subject was so distorted as to earn a reprimand from FactCheck.org.

When liberalism causes a problem, by all means, don't allow the natural equalizer of the free market to cure it. Insist on more government intervention under the theory that the problem is a result of too little government. It's kind of reminiscent of the Marxist promise of the withering away of the state, is it not? Just give us totalitarian control and we'll eventually unshackle the proletariat from government bondage. Right. There's also a bridge to the Kremlin they'd like to sell you.

Which brings us back to the current subprime mortgage crisis. When we strip away all the complexity, we discover that social planning largely led to this debacle. Government politicians and bureaucrats forced lending institutions to make un-creditworthy loans and helped create unnatural demand in the housing market by priming the pump on bad loans. This created an unnatural price bubble in real estate, which was securing these ill-advised loans. When the bubble inevitably burst, the mortgages secured by the artificially inflated real estate plummeted in value, which left us with an epidemic of grossly under-secured loans.....

The Democrats will never take responsibility for the mess they made and they would rather look for scapegoats than a solution. When a solution is designed you can expect that Democrats will be trying to get their hands in the cookie jar for more for their constituents instead of solving the problem.

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ELSEWHERE

An interesting post here about Pinochet and Allende in Chile. A point that I had missed is that Pinochet was actually appointed to the top army job by Allende himself!

Feminist Naomi Wolfe lapses into full-blown paranoid schizophrenia: "Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says "That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived."

Obama vs. Biden: "So in the last 24 hours we have seen Joe Biden call an Obama campaign ad terrible and say it would never have happened if he had known about it; Barack Obama say Joe Biden should not have opposed the AIG bailout last week; and Joe Biden disagreeing with Obama's position on clean coal and telling a voter (rather unpleasantly) that his view, not Obama's, is the campaign's position. Not a great sign from the guys who argue that running a campaign is a substitute for executive experience."

The Palin surge shows up the feminists: "McCain's hand grenade has exploded the rot at the core of today's feminists; and by exposing the inner emptiness of feminism, she has also torn apart the center of all the victimhood/identity politics that have driven the Democratic Party for a generation. The Party of Nothing--with all their pious intonations about victimhood and diversity; hope and change--stands before us in the pseudopersona of the Obamessiah and his dedicated minions, who will do anything for him. Meanwhile, Sarah continues to draw in the crowds and revitalize the Republican conservative base. How frightening that must be for the "progressives" of the left."

Follow the money: Barack Obama Edition : "Writing at the American Thinker, Mac Fuller describes the flow of funds around Barack Obama in an exquisitely documented article. Did you know that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has received $15 million in federal funds? Yep, that's the same Wright who accompanied Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan on a trip to Libya (and the Pan Am 103 mastermind Muammar Gaddafi), published Hamas propaganda in his newsletter and espoused racially divisive, anti-American rhetoric for decades. All the while, he was collecting millions in taxpayer funds from "G*dd**n America, the USKKK of A" (his words). Unsettling to say the least."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Clubbing the Bailout

The Club for Growth condemned the massive government bailout proposed by the Treasury and the Bush administration as unnecessary, unfair to taxpayers, and fraught with serious costs to the American economy

Eighteen months into the credit crunch, many largely capitalized financial services firms are experiencing serious difficulties but the overall economy continues to grow. GDP growth over the past 12 months was 2.25 percent and 3.5 percent when excluding the drag imposed by the housing sector. Even within the financial sector, many banks are doing well.

Regional bank indices had risen significantly since the lows of last July-prior to the bailout announcement-and thousands of community banks are thriving. It is extraordinary that a massive government intervention in the economy is considered inevitable when the economy is not even in a recession.

At the same time, socializing economic risks come at a great cost to the American economy by misallocating capital, inviting political manipulation, and putting taxpayers on the hook for possibly a trillion dollars. Such a large takeover by the government will surely be accompanied by adverse, unintended consequences. Already, other companies and industries are lining up at government's door asking for their own bailout. And if the government incurs $700 billion in debt to finance the purchase of bad bank assets, the danger that it will eventually monetize that debt and trigger dramatic inflation is very worrisome

"The Treasury's bailout proposal will likely cause more harm than good," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. Instead of launching the largest government bailout since the Great Depression, the government should be implementing policies to stimulate the economy. These include, at a minimum, cutting the tax on capital gains, cutting corporate taxes, reviewing and considering repeal of FAS 57 which requires banks to mark-to-market most securities, and emphasizing the need for a strong dollar."

"Finally, many politicians are using the current struggle to make free-market capitalism the scapegoat for the economy's troubles, when in fact, government played a major role in getting us into this mess in the first place. Free-market capitalism is alive and well, and we should be embracing its tenets, not rejecting them."

Source

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Why Henry Paulson must be "contained"

Both parties in Washington are about to screw us over on an unprecedented scale. They are threatening us with fiscal apocalypse if we don't fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses - without public input or recourse. They are rushing like mad to cram this Mother of All Bailouts down our throats in the next 72-96 hours. And right there in the text of the proposal is this naked power grab: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Stop. My question for fellow conservatives: Do you trust this man? I don't. Do you trust Hank Paulson's judgment? I don't. Listen to what he said about the subprime crisis in April 2007:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said... the housing market correction appears to be at or near its bottom and that troubles in the subprime mortgage market will not likely spread throughout the economy. "We've clearly had a big correction in the housing market. Retail housing was growing for some time at a level that was not sustainable," Paulson said in a speech to The Committee of 100, a business group in New York promoting better Chinese relations. "I don't see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it's going to be largely contained," he added.

Much more here

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Former Clinton Staffers Jump to McCain Camp

MSNBC reports on the former Hillary staffers now supporting McCain and making strong arguments against The One. One must wonder if (officially) pro-Obama Hillary urged these loyal staffers to not do this. It would be unusual for Clinton loyalists to do something against her wishes. Some gems from the former Clinton supporters:

"Obama really doesn't have the experience," said Miguel Lausell, senior national political advisor to Hillary Clinton. "We don't know what he's going to be doing. We don't really know where he's coming from, and that's the big difference."

Luchy Secaira, former Sen. Hillary Clinton Delegate-at-Large, said that stance on women's issues is all talk and no action. Secaira said that Obama's rhetoric on the Equal Pay Act is not backed up with hiring practices in his Senate office. "We need to look no further than Sen. Obama's own senate office, where it's been documented that he pays women less on his staff than males on his staff," said Secaira. "He talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk."

"The Hispanic community has nothing to fear, because they know John McCain," Secaira added. "He has fought against his own party on behalf of the Hispanic community and was an integral part in trying to bring forth comprehensive immigration reform."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Has Sarah swung Mac on ANWR? "Alaska's congressional delegation seemed confident that if Sen. John McCain wins the presidency, he would sign off on a bill opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development. There are, however, a lot of ifs. The race for the White House is neck and neck, and Congress doesn't have a bill giving the go-ahead to oil development in Alaska's far north."

Inquest into British police shooting: Police ruled victim out as suspect 20 mins before they shot him! "Jean Charles de Menezes was ruled out as a suspected suicide bomber just 20 minutes before he was shot dead by police, an inquest into his death has heard. The innocent Brazilian was killed on a Tube train at Stockwell Underground station on July 22, 2005 after being mistaken for one of the four terrorists who had tried to blow themselves up on London's transport system the previous day. Two firearms officers who shot him in the head a total of seven times at point blank range have said they were "convinced" Mr de Menezes was about to detonate a suicide bomb and that "an instant killing was the only option" otherwise "everyone in the carriage was going to die". Yet an officer in the Metropolitan Police control room directing the surveillance teams who followed Mr de Menezes made a note which said: "Not identical male as above discounted. Surveillance to withdraw to original positions."

Another Dem talking point proven false: "The Democrats want you to believe that the Iraq War turned the world -- especially the Muslim world -- has turned against us because we toppled an evil killer of Muslims. Their prescription was to pull out our troops. So how do we explain this from the Jordan Times? AMMAN - Jordanian Muslims' support for Osama Ben Laden has dropped dramatically this year, with only 19 per cent expressing confidence in Al Qaeda leader, compared to 61 per cent three years ago, according to a study.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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