Among prospects for Community Organizers, what character traits are sought or prized, if not traits for broadcasting blame against one’s country for not having provided all that to which one felt (by greed?) entitled?
.
COWARDICE AND CORRUPTION:
.
JOY OF BEING GOVERNED BY BABIES:
.
Any representative democracy that wishes long to survive cannot afford to delegate the right to vote to such masses as are inexperienced, mis-educated, easily duped, slaves to narcissism, or un-invested dis-loyalists.
.
UNPRINCIPLED CONGRESS AND REGULATORS OF BABY BOOMERS DEFY REALITY:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13983:
Matters got worse when, after principled House members of the right and left combined to slow down the legislative stampede, the Senate decided to collectively play mob boss. By attaching this incredibly important and deservedly controversial bailout bill to not one but two utterly unrelated bills -- one on mental health, and one on tax policy -- the Senate stole the House's constitutional prerogative to originate all revenue bills, used extraneous items as both bribe and blackmail to force the House's hand, and muddied waters that needed clarifying. On legislation so momentous, the public deserves a clean vote, not one obfuscated by parliamentary maneuvering and by the fog of unrelated issues. If a lawmaker is to vote for such a bailout, he ought to be held accountable for deciding the bailout question itself, alone, up or down -- without being rewarded with the ability to hang his explanation for his vote on the presence in the bill of other matters.
....
Meanwhile, the presidential campaign is marred, on one side, by a radical and utterly unaccomplished leftist ideologue joined by a serial plagiarist and exaggerator, and on the other side by a man temperamentally unsuited to the presidency joined by a running mate of high character but embarrassingly low familiarity with national affairs of state.
******
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/kill_the_bailout.html:
The Senate is supposed to serve, in James Madison's analogy, as the "cooling saucer" for the hot tea served up by the House--but in this case, it is the House that has remained cool and refused to panic. That's because the hysterical demand for a bailout didn't come up from the people; it came down from the elites in Washington and Manhattan. The House is reflecting the sensible skepticism coming up from the folks on Main Street who don't want to pay the bills for bailing out Hank Paulson's former colleagues on Wall Street.
Some cold, realistic scrutiny of the bailout is desperately needed because this plan is not just an attack on the free market. It is an attack on reality. The financial crisis was caused by more than a decade of using government power to rewrite the facts of reality and override the judgment of the market, and the bailout just offers more of the same fantasy economics.
....
So the Fed's approach to potential bank failures was to try to help failing banks pretend that they weren't failing.
....
Instead, this plan transforms the US Treasury into a trillion-dollar hedge fund, making investments in securities whose proper market value is unknown and promising its shareholders--us--that unlike the best Wall Street investment banks, Treasury bureaucrats really know how to make a profit on sub-prime mortgage loans. That's why probably the best comment on the bailout is an e-mail making the rounds on Capitol Hill presenting Paulson's pitch for the bailout deal--in the style of a Nigerian banking scam. "I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude," it begins. Time to hit the "delete" button.
....
Much worse is the fact that a chief negotiator for the bailout is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the chief sponsor of the "affordable housing" scam. And as for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama's former employer as a "community organizer." It turns out that a big part of ACORN's "community organizing" was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.
*****
BEING GOVERNED BY UNDISCIPLINED CHILDREN:
Snippet from interesting comment by GeorgeS, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/fanniefreddie_and_the_stealth.html:
You get elected by giving things away - not taking it. Conservatives need to take away the liberal handouts in order to provide a smaller, less intrusive government. But the big problem is when an entitlement recipient poses the question of:
"What does a smaller government do for me?"
"You pay less taxes"
"But I don't pay taxes"
Then you shouldn't vote. And that's the problem in a nutshell.
*****
Snippet from interesting comment by Curly Smith, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/fanniefreddie_and_the_stealth.html:
All mortgage seekers who pay less than 20% down are required by lenders to buy PMI to protect the lender from default. So why is the mess not confined to the insurers? It's because sub-prime borrowers aren't required to have PMI. The "greedy insurers" who wouldn't provide the insurance "at a reasonable cost" clearly understood the risk of default so the insurance was not required for the riskiest borrowers.
******
Snippet from interesting comment by Joe Dantone, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/fanniefreddie_and_the_stealth.html:
We have no leaders and the propaganda war is being won under our noses because we have no leadership. Without that, the strategies don't matter.
******
Snippet from interesting comment by Blake B, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/fanniefreddie_and_the_stealth.html:
So, in a general sense, over the last eighty years at an ever escalating pace we eschewed our Constitutional mandate for limited government and ignored the guidance offered by our God given moral compass. Instead we chose to pursue with supposedly altruistic intent big government solutions to perceived social problems while adhering to secularist dictates and situational ethics. All the while we girded these national pursuits with collective ignorance, a power of denial, the selfish and irresponsible use of other peoples' money and a narcissistic propensity which seemed to know no bounds. Those who knew better protested too little, too inconsistently or sometimes not at all. So here we are with a historically undeniable indictment of liberalism specifically, politics in general and the group that consistently has been big government's most ardent ally, the baby boomer generation. Yet, at the same time and with a continuing sense of denial we are about to transfer even more power to Washington through a massive bailout of our financial system and to elect the greatest big government liberal who has ever run for president. Should anyone be surprised we find ourselves as a nation on a precipice of self destruction as the "crisis" description would indicate?
*******
Snippet from interesting comment by DaveT, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senate_bailout_bill_a_bizarre.html
Once again out elected officials give us the big middle finger. Despite total opposition from the public, nope, they pass it and ram this pork package thru. This is nothing but a excuse to enact a massive pork package.
Sooo once again, were screwed. Now it appears the MSM has managed to sell the most vapid candidate in history. Instead of lowering federal spending, cutting taxes and electing a man with a 100% small business support rating (guess who creates most jobs) were going to elect a socialist who despises business, raises taxes and increases pork.
When Jimmy Carter II get finished, will the media accept blame?
I hope the left realizes it is a lot harder to govern than to sit around and complain. When his socialist policies fail, and they will because socialism always fails, they cannot blame Bush this time.
********
Snippet from interesting comment by Curly Smith, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senate_bailout_bill_a_bizarre.html
It's good to see the wisdom of the Senate on display... bribery and corruption led to the financial mess so it's logical that more bribery and corruption will solve it.
One a more positive note, stop by the Halloween Sale at your local Ace Hardware. Buy a pitchfork and get a free torch! I've got a feeling that we'll be needing them soon.
*********
Snippet from interesting comment by laura d, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senate_bailout_bill_a_bizarre.html
This is not good legislation. This is why America is failing. In our households, do we "bundle" things into our budget?? Do we say, we will not "ok" money for groceries unless we "ok" a trip to Europe in our budget?? No. Because we would go broke. We do not "hold hostage" our grocery spending on the basis of vacation spending. Every line item of spending must justify itself and be duly agreed upon. What the Congress does is blackmail. Like, we will not eat by spending money on the basics unless you agree to my demands for wasteful spending. This has got to stop. There should be a law that requires each bill to gain approval independently of all other bills. Period. Not just a line item veto... but a law against pork and piggybacking one item upon the back of another spending item. Our government is not working.
*********
Snippet from interesting comment by Dave, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senate_bailout_bill_a_bizarre.html
Wouldn't it be better than to have the Treasury simply open up a deposit account in the banks and place cash into those accounts? For every $1 deposited, $12 in credit liquidity should be opened up for the banks to loan out. So, to reach the similar $2.1 trillion liquidity of purchasing toxic debt, the same credit liquidity could be generated by depositing "only" $175 billion directly into banking accounts.
JOY OF BEING GOVERNED BY BABIES:
.
Any representative democracy that wishes long to survive cannot afford to delegate the right to vote to such masses as are inexperienced, mis-educated, easily duped, slaves to narcissism, or un-invested dis-loyalists.
.
UNPRINCIPLED CONGRESS AND REGULATORS OF BABY BOOMERS DEFY REALITY:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13983:
Matters got worse when, after principled House members of the right and left combined to slow down the legislative stampede, the Senate decided to collectively play mob boss. By attaching this incredibly important and deservedly controversial bailout bill to not one but two utterly unrelated bills -- one on mental health, and one on tax policy -- the Senate stole the House's constitutional prerogative to originate all revenue bills, used extraneous items as both bribe and blackmail to force the House's hand, and muddied waters that needed clarifying. On legislation so momentous, the public deserves a clean vote, not one obfuscated by parliamentary maneuvering and by the fog of unrelated issues. If a lawmaker is to vote for such a bailout, he ought to be held accountable for deciding the bailout question itself, alone, up or down -- without being rewarded with the ability to hang his explanation for his vote on the presence in the bill of other matters.
....
Meanwhile, the presidential campaign is marred, on one side, by a radical and utterly unaccomplished leftist ideologue joined by a serial plagiarist and exaggerator, and on the other side by a man temperamentally unsuited to the presidency joined by a running mate of high character but embarrassingly low familiarity with national affairs of state.
******
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/kill_the_bailout.html:
The Senate is supposed to serve, in James Madison's analogy, as the "cooling saucer" for the hot tea served up by the House--but in this case, it is the House that has remained cool and refused to panic. That's because the hysterical demand for a bailout didn't come up from the people; it came down from the elites in Washington and Manhattan. The House is reflecting the sensible skepticism coming up from the folks on Main Street who don't want to pay the bills for bailing out Hank Paulson's former colleagues on Wall Street.
Some cold, realistic scrutiny of the bailout is desperately needed because this plan is not just an attack on the free market. It is an attack on reality. The financial crisis was caused by more than a decade of using government power to rewrite the facts of reality and override the judgment of the market, and the bailout just offers more of the same fantasy economics.
....
So the Fed's approach to potential bank failures was to try to help failing banks pretend that they weren't failing.
....
Instead, this plan transforms the US Treasury into a trillion-dollar hedge fund, making investments in securities whose proper market value is unknown and promising its shareholders--us--that unlike the best Wall Street investment banks, Treasury bureaucrats really know how to make a profit on sub-prime mortgage loans. That's why probably the best comment on the bailout is an e-mail making the rounds on Capitol Hill presenting Paulson's pitch for the bailout deal--in the style of a Nigerian banking scam. "I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude," it begins. Time to hit the "delete" button.
....
Much worse is the fact that a chief negotiator for the bailout is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the chief sponsor of the "affordable housing" scam. And as for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama's former employer as a "community organizer." It turns out that a big part of ACORN's "community organizing" was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.
*****
BEING GOVERNED BY UNDISCIPLINED CHILDREN:
Snippet from interesting comment by GeorgeS, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/fanniefreddie_and_the_stealth.html:
You get elected by giving things away - not taking it. Conservatives need to take away the liberal handouts in order to provide a smaller, less intrusive government. But the big problem is when an entitlement recipient poses the question of:
"What does a smaller government do for me?"
"You pay less taxes"
"But I don't pay taxes"
Then you shouldn't vote. And that's the problem in a nutshell.
*****
Snippet from interesting comment by Curly Smith, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/fanniefreddie_and_the_stealth.html:
All mortgage seekers who pay less than 20% down are required by lenders to buy PMI to protect the lender from default. So why is the mess not confined to the insurers? It's because sub-prime borrowers aren't required to have PMI. The "greedy insurers" who wouldn't provide the insurance "at a reasonable cost" clearly understood the risk of default so the insurance was not required for the riskiest borrowers.
******
Snippet from interesting comment by Joe Dantone, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/fanniefreddie_and_the_stealth.html:
We have no leaders and the propaganda war is being won under our noses because we have no leadership. Without that, the strategies don't matter.
******
Snippet from interesting comment by Blake B, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/fanniefreddie_and_the_stealth.html:
So, in a general sense, over the last eighty years at an ever escalating pace we eschewed our Constitutional mandate for limited government and ignored the guidance offered by our God given moral compass. Instead we chose to pursue with supposedly altruistic intent big government solutions to perceived social problems while adhering to secularist dictates and situational ethics. All the while we girded these national pursuits with collective ignorance, a power of denial, the selfish and irresponsible use of other peoples' money and a narcissistic propensity which seemed to know no bounds. Those who knew better protested too little, too inconsistently or sometimes not at all. So here we are with a historically undeniable indictment of liberalism specifically, politics in general and the group that consistently has been big government's most ardent ally, the baby boomer generation. Yet, at the same time and with a continuing sense of denial we are about to transfer even more power to Washington through a massive bailout of our financial system and to elect the greatest big government liberal who has ever run for president. Should anyone be surprised we find ourselves as a nation on a precipice of self destruction as the "crisis" description would indicate?
*******
Snippet from interesting comment by DaveT, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senate_bailout_bill_a_bizarre.html
Once again out elected officials give us the big middle finger. Despite total opposition from the public, nope, they pass it and ram this pork package thru. This is nothing but a excuse to enact a massive pork package.
Sooo once again, were screwed. Now it appears the MSM has managed to sell the most vapid candidate in history. Instead of lowering federal spending, cutting taxes and electing a man with a 100% small business support rating (guess who creates most jobs) were going to elect a socialist who despises business, raises taxes and increases pork.
When Jimmy Carter II get finished, will the media accept blame?
I hope the left realizes it is a lot harder to govern than to sit around and complain. When his socialist policies fail, and they will because socialism always fails, they cannot blame Bush this time.
********
Snippet from interesting comment by Curly Smith, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senate_bailout_bill_a_bizarre.html
It's good to see the wisdom of the Senate on display... bribery and corruption led to the financial mess so it's logical that more bribery and corruption will solve it.
One a more positive note, stop by the Halloween Sale at your local Ace Hardware. Buy a pitchfork and get a free torch! I've got a feeling that we'll be needing them soon.
*********
Snippet from interesting comment by laura d, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senate_bailout_bill_a_bizarre.html
This is not good legislation. This is why America is failing. In our households, do we "bundle" things into our budget?? Do we say, we will not "ok" money for groceries unless we "ok" a trip to Europe in our budget?? No. Because we would go broke. We do not "hold hostage" our grocery spending on the basis of vacation spending. Every line item of spending must justify itself and be duly agreed upon. What the Congress does is blackmail. Like, we will not eat by spending money on the basics unless you agree to my demands for wasteful spending. This has got to stop. There should be a law that requires each bill to gain approval independently of all other bills. Period. Not just a line item veto... but a law against pork and piggybacking one item upon the back of another spending item. Our government is not working.
*********
Snippet from interesting comment by Dave, posted at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senate_bailout_bill_a_bizarre.html
Wouldn't it be better than to have the Treasury simply open up a deposit account in the banks and place cash into those accounts? For every $1 deposited, $12 in credit liquidity should be opened up for the banks to loan out. So, to reach the similar $2.1 trillion liquidity of purchasing toxic debt, the same credit liquidity could be generated by depositing "only" $175 billion directly into banking accounts.
.
Shame on Boomers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5beYUpdUb3U
Government budget morally unsustainable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Q14HOBThM
Immigration Joke by Congress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7k3US0N9MA;
Murtha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNZB0iM6lV4;
Pelosi failure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjaK9KiVqDo;
George Carlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY4WlxO6i0;
COURAGE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23ZqedYqBpQ;
Government budget morally unsustainable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Q14HOBThM
Immigration Joke by Congress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7k3US0N9MA;
Murtha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNZB0iM6lV4;
Pelosi failure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjaK9KiVqDo;
George Carlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY4WlxO6i0;
COURAGE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23ZqedYqBpQ;
.
HOW TO TELL IF YOU’RE AN ELITIST — SEE http://townhall.com/Columnists/BenShapiro/2008/10/21/you_know_youre_an_elitist_if. .
Government and media are too important to be left entirely to "elite-in-their-own-minds" intellectual hirelings of socialist billionaires. See: http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/11/11/intellectuals.
Liberal tolerance of dissent --- see: http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2008/11/11/liberal_censorship_and_its_roots.
Liberal tolerance of dissent --- see: http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2008/11/11/liberal_censorship_and_its_roots.
.
15 comments:
CAUSE OF CRISES:
Snippet from interesting comment by Fred, posted at
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/09/diversity-recession-debunking.html
Your commenter is probably right that blacks and Latinos themselves probably had a small impact on the housing bubble, but attempts to weaken lending standards on their behalf probably had a much bigger impact, as marginal white borrowers took advantage of them too.
******
Snippet from interesting comment by Born Again Democrat, posted at
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/09/diversity-recession-debunking.html:
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/search?q=subprime
Having looked into it a little, my guess is that it is not the subprime mortgages themselves which are the bottom of the panic, but rather the highly leveraged bets that certain banks, brokerage houses, and hedge funds made on these mortgages. Look up "credit default swaps" on Wikipedia to get an idea how this might explain it. The Long Term Capital fiasco also sheds light.
Snippet from interesting comment by Roger Chaillet, posted at
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/09/diversity-recession-debunking.html:
Fred's correct: Marginal white borrowers took advantage of the same lax standards.
I know this as I used to work as a mortgage loan officer.
Moreover, all standards became lax, including appraisal standards and inspection standards.
It was a perfect storm of systemic corruption.
*******
Snippet from interesting comment by Mark Seecof, posted at
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/09/diversity-recession-debunking.html:
Anyway, here is one: the government started a price spiral by compelling lenders to give money to people who couldn't pay it back, then kept it going by insisting that lenders give such people more and more money as prices rose in order to keep poor people in the home-buying game. It was nuts: easy credit pushed up prices, which threatened to price out poor people, so the government pushed for even easier credit to keep poor folks participating, which forced prices up again, and round-and-round.
Two kinds of competition fueled the lending-terms spiral: retail competition forced lenders to extend the same easy credit to qualified borrowers as unqualified, putting more upward pressure on prices, and all borrowers competed for homes, forcing unqualified borrowers to ask for easier and easier terms.
If the government had relented after force-financing the first wave of otherwise unqualified buyers, the market would just have reached a new plateau.
However, and this is the key thing, the government continued to press lenders on minority borrowing. Every year the government demanded reports from lenders showing that they had financed a proportionate number of unqualifed buyers. As prices rose, lenders had to relax mortgage terms more and more to keep preferred minorities in the game. Competitive pressure ensured that everyone got the same easy terms.
Now, once the whole mess was launched a bunch of positive feedback loops, particularly the desire for everyone in the home-sales/loan-origination chain to keep earning big fees, helped keep it growing. But without the government constantly pushing lenders to give more and more money to unqualified borrowers as prices rose, the whole thing probably would never have gotten so big.
PARTY OF DEFEAT:
Snippets from http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=A14B6072-1DDE-4EC6-AB2C-8A9728BC0861:
We do not believe “an anti-war leftist clique has seized control of the levers of power” in the Democratic Party, nor do we believe that such a hypothesis is necessary to explain the worst betrayal in time of war by a major political party in the nation’s history. Much of the Democrats’ irresponsible, reckless and yes, anti-American behavior can be ascribed to political opportunism run amok: Democrats as a party benefited if a foreign policy disaster could be attributed to Republicans. The difference between the Democrats and Farley’s leftist clique is this: Democrats want to win elections even if it means losing a war; leftists want America to lose its wars whoever wins the election.
....
What caused Kerry and Edwards to change from war supporters to anti-war leaders was the fact that Howard Dean, an obscure anti-war leftist, was about to win the Democratic Party nomination and thwart their personal ambitions. So close was Dean to victory that Jimmy Carter and Al Gore had descended on Iowa to anoint him. That was why Kerry turned on his president and his country’s war: a political poll that went against him.
....
... Party of Defeat supports criticism of war policy. But it makes distinctions between criticism of policy within a democratic framework and sabotage of policy, often outside that framework, such as leaking national secrets.
....
... we make distinctions between critics outside of government such as Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, and critics such as John Kerry who sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee with access to the same information as the president about Iraq. Knowing what the president knew, Kerry supported the war until Howard Dean’s anti-war candidacy threatened his ambitions. He then turned against the war and accused his own president of lying to the public in order to conduct a needless war of aggression.
We are in free fall because of moral failure of nerve and will. We are investing our seed corn in Ponzi schemes upon Ponzi schemes -– meta-Ponzi schemes! We are indenturing our posterity to unsustainable debt, even as Baby Boomers among our electorate, our regulators, and our Congress lead us in partying on.
We sense proximity of an undefinable financial evil, and our response is to incite enactment of an emergency bailout — which we lard up with, you guessed it, more unsustainable debt. As electorate, this sort of representation seems to be what we have come to deserve.
Fundamentally, we have lost our moral compass. As evidence: Consider who and what we have empowered in Congress. Consider that we do not appreciate even the fundamental importance of family. Hell, we think marriage is between an adult and some consenting critter (or critters). And, we so celebrate in public streets, probably funded with public money. Having lost all capacity to draw and enforce behavioral limits, why be surprised we have lost all economic discipline?
Obama will be an economic and moral disaster. We will not likely preserve civilized freedom and dignity without bloodshed, if we preserve it at all. The question is emerging: What becomes the most effective time for ignition?
Are we better off to let an economic depression strike and discipline our mass delusion of entitlement now, or should we put off our needed discipline until hell really breaks loose? Does anyone see moral reason to expect or hope that any leadership in sight will suddenly see light, rather than just continue to roll unsustainable debt off to posterity?
Snippets from http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/the_great_boomer_comeuppance.html
The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification, and a rollicking sense of entitlement.
….
This crisis is, at bottom, about self government in two senses and the Boomer Elite is against both. On the macro level, they don't want the American people to govern themselves under the terms of the Constitution of 1789, preferring to rule over us by anti-democratic means wherever possible, and to the full extent possible. On the micro level, being Rousseau's children, they abjure governing their own appetites, and bid everyone act likewise. The Boomer Elite ideal is a sort of Directorate in the political system and economy, moral anarchy in personal conduct, and a quasi-totalitarian PC regime in societal relations. It is bad character as a manifesto, and tsarism as a mode of governance.
….
COMMENT:
Graduates With Dunce Cap "Honors":
Our electorate needs major correction --- the sooner the better. We are in steep moral decline, having been conditioned with little character to discipline us. We are infested in addictions, riding waves of delusions of free lunch entitlements. We are in need of moral correction, instruction, and example, every bit as much as we are in need of financial correction.
As exemplars for correction, Pelosi, Frank, and Reid inspire no confidence whatsoever. They should resign. They are stooges. Most likely, we, as electorate, will continue to get what we deserve.
Character could be instilled by good examples, good teachers, and receptive learners. But, such have been banished or booed by Boomers.
Fortunately, character is also often taught in schools of hard knocks. Finally, we are about to receive some long-delayed instruction about moral reality.
But, if the lesson is to be learned, Boomers cannot be left to cower away from the hook. To the corner with them, with Dunce caps of shame!
Bird Feeder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaklEq36_dk
*****
Let's see: We're going to cure bad government by giving bad governors (legislators) more of our money to give us more bad government?
I've heard of fighting fire with fire, but has anyone ever succeeded in fighting bad government with more bad government?
Is this like math, where negative 1 times negative 1 gives you positive 1?
Well, not quite, because we are adding and subtracting, not multiplying.
So, negative 1 plus negative 1 just gives us negative 2, i.e., puts us deeper in the hole.
The first rule of holes is "stop digging."
Instead, we should take shovels to Washington.
"It's clobberin' time!"
Let's give them headaches enough to appreciate some real "fuzzy math."
******
Commentary: Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer
Story Highlights
Jeffrey Miron: Government encouraged lenders to relax their standards
Mortgages were given to people unqualified to repay them, he says
Miron: Rather than a bailout, government should let firms go bankrupt
Talk of economic Armageddon is scare-mongering, Miron says
By Jeffrey A. Miron
Special to CNN
Editor's note: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University . A Libertarian, he was one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the government bailout plan.
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Congress has balked at the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the "troubled assets" of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.
This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.
The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.
Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.
This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.
Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.
The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.
The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.
Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.
In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.
Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.
Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.
Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.
The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration's claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.
If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.
The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.
Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.
So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.
The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.
“Feeling Your Pain In Order To Feel Your Wallet” is getting mighty old.
From Newsmax — Example of how cynical, soulless, single-minded power-lusters gain control over populations by diverting their attention to abstract promises of respect for natural or spiritual goodness, all the while picking their pockets, enslaving their minds, and forcing their loyalty:
The citizens of Ecuador have approved a new constitution that essentially gives nature the same rights as human beings.
“Persons and people have the fundamental rights guaranteed in this constitution and in the international human rights instrument. Nature is subject to those rights given by this constitution and law,” reads one article in the document, the 20th constitution in the South American nation since 1830.
The constitution also states that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.”
As a result of the new constitution, “drilling or exploring for oil in environmentally sensitive areas could become increasingly difficult” in Ecuador, where oil revenues account for more than half the nation’s export earnings, the American Spectator notes.
For advice on the nature’s rights language in its constitution, Ecuador turned to a public interest law firm right here in the U.S., the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in Chambersburg, Pa.
The firm has already convinced some small municipalities in the U.S. to pass similar legislation to keep large corporations off their turf, according to the American Spectator story written by Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz.
The nature provision is not the only unsettling element of the new constitution.
President Rafael Correa will now be able to remain in office until 2017, dissolve congress at will, and seize and redistribute idle farmland. The constitution also enables him to take over control of the country’s monetary policy, and exercise exclusive authority over the budget.
The Spectator observes: “In other words, we are seeing the making of another Hugo Chavez-like Venezuela.”
OBSERVATION: Without experienced, empathetic, energetic skeptics, aided by carefully nurtured institutions for empowering strong checks and balances, the easily-duped, media-mesmerized masses are just ripe for the picking. America is at a dangerous tipping point. If we tip right, we may get a new lease on liberty. If we tip left, God help us, because power-lusting faux-socialists won’t.
See http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BC944FA7-670F-44DF-A97E-1848964CA044.
RACIST:
From http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/the_numbskull_vote.html:
October 14, 2008
The numbskull vote
Rosslyn Smith
Howard Stern sends out people to poll Obama voters in Harlem, attributing all of McCain's positions to Obama. Those questioned didn't seem to recognize that positions such as being pro life and finishing the war in Iraq were the exact opposite of Obama's actual positions. And they all still support Obama.
Tell me again exactly who is casting a vote based on race.
*****
ACORN FRAUD:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/how_to_steal_ohio.html
ELITES: Not unlike theatrical value-added by the faux king and prince in Tom Sawyer, much of the “substantive-value-added” that elites specialize in selling, beyond snooty pretense and snobby conceit, just ain’t so. Hey, prideful “elites,” you ain’t "special" just because your mommies told you so. Grow up!
Unraveling American Self-Reliance — Mexicanization of America:
http://www.newsmax.com/ruddy/ruddy_gop_survival/2008/10/27/144701.html:
For Republicans, changing demographics are worrisome. Minorities and immigrants like the idea of a big and benevolent government handing out benefits — the something-for-nothing boondoggles that the Democrats have reveled in since Franklin Roosevelt invented the concept.
If you give amnesty, which really means citizenship, to just 2 million or 3 million of the 12 million illegals here, the electoral map moves dramatically in favor of the Democratic Party. But there will be no reason why Obama and the Democrats won’t push for amnesty and citizenship for all 12 million.
....
Today, Texas is an anchor for the GOP nationally. But an Obama amnesty program will put that state solidly into the Democratic column. Florida and other smaller red states like Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico will become quite blue. Blue states, like California and New York, will get bluer.
****
New Socialist Media — Palin Negative Headlines:
See http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/palin_negative_headlines/2008/10/28/144911.html?s=al&promo_code=6F48-1
More Academic Lunacy --- Critical Race Theory --- see:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how-critical-race-theory-molded-obama/.
Comment by Dlanor, at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/obama_declares_war_on_conserva.html:
Re: "Radio and television stations are required to serve the interests of their local community as a condition of keeping their broadcast licenses. "
Even Bill Clinton has occasionally noted the importance of developing a "worldview" and reasoning in respect of it --- even with regard to local issues. Obviously, talk radio relates to worldview.
However, I can see how idiots and control freaks could argue that discussions about national or world topics cannot serve local concerns.
There may be "fairness" in requiring some time to be dedicated to discussion of local issues. To require more than that is to impair the exchange of ideas among folks who listen to talk radio on their way to work. That is, to enfeeble communication among those of us who are actually responsible enough to have real world jobs.
Way to go, libs! Bite the ankles of those who are trying to ensure for you a decent country!
Comment by Dlanor, at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/a_damned_defeat.html:
RE: "There is no secret any longer about the ideology of these people, or about their close alliances with Islamic radicals, destructive Leftist billionaires and Saudi influence buyers."
Yes, we should now know enough to apprehend that the coming consolidation of governmental control will be a rape of American style freedom.
It is tragic that a majority of women, Jews, and Catholics swooned for this. It is reprehensible and scurrilous that a majority of journalists, academics, and wall street players furtively abetted. But, at least the masks are now off (and also off the Republican Bluebloods), so we know who are sheep and who are corrupt opportunists.
Knowledge is power. Now we must marshal and use it.
******
Legalize and regulate pot. Leave regulation of abortion up to the States. A federal candidate ought not be pro-choice or pro-life, but pro-Constitution. Judeo-Christian traditions and values should be relatively unhindered and respected, but not enforced as such by secular authority. For goodness sakes, don't mess with marriage.
Bluebloods only show their ignorant asses when they hold their noses around moral believers. We can go into the wilderness for awhile and emerge stronger, without Blueblood ninnies (who stand in fear that Palin's cajones are bigger than theirs).
We are going to have to get strong enough to reassert adult supervision and, when needed, to get back in the faces of socialist-moral-anarchist-mental-adolescents (aka, "smama's," or "faux elites"). Put "return to sender" on their dead fish.
******
See http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/11/rahm_emanuel_and_the_classless.html:
I can see rewarding voluntary public service with college assistance incentives. I do not see the point of taxing folks like myself to guarantee 4 years of college for every derelict. For many people (like a lot of Democrats), formal education beyond high school just avails them with educations that are too much for their intellects. That, and more time to sponge off the State while making contacts with community organizing rabble-rousers. Take these folks' dead fish and send it "return to sender." My goodness, isn't it time yet for these 40 some year old's to G-R-O-W U-P!?
Feminization of Europe:
Comment by Dlanor, at http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/11/bully_for_jonah_goldberg_for_h.html:
Fems who are hot (or who think they are), male or female, seem more often to compete, cattily, than to cooperate. Looking past grammar to essential American substance, what is the substance of Palin that bluebloods so disdain? Bluebloods seem as anxious as Dems to lead us to Euro-like, “anything goes” social morality. In history, how desirable or successful has that been? It's not like feminized Europe, as a free civilization, is likely to last much longer.
See http://www.frontline.org.za/articles/What_is_Happening_to_Europe.htm:
“… the European culture that has demanded unlimited personal freedom is heading towards repression under Islamic Sharia law. By rejecting its Christian heritage, embracing secular Humanism and welcoming massive Islamic immigration, Europe is committing cultural and economic suicide.”
Comment at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/its_time_to_speak_out_against.html:
San Francisco should lead us to a National Gay Morning Celebration Day, so governments can publicly declare:
“Henceforth, every Gay citizen of age is recognized to be “married in the sense of being polyamoursly related” to every other citizen Gay of age of consent. This declaration shall have effect only for purpose of celebration among Gays, and not for expanding legal holidays or the legal definition of “marriage” or any legal relationship for any other purpose.”
In other words, all Gays should thus be declared gay, and “normally gay within their communities,” with equal right to pursue the affections of one another, as circumstances may accord, subject to existing rules and laws for protecting and respectng public decency.
You may now kiss the Blushing Benjamin.
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