In his 2011 book, "To Save America", GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich wrote the following (from Bloomberg):

[The two companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae] “are so thoroughly politicized and preside over such irresponsible lending policies that they need to be replaced with smaller, private companies operating without government guarantees, whose leaders focus on making a profit, not manipulating politicians".

I certainly agree with that. As I've detailed on this blog, government manipulation of the mortgage market is what led to our current financial crisis. The government created the housing casino market over a period of many years.

But Newt has some 'splainin' to do to Republican primary voters, and most especially to Tea Partiers who want to dismantle the ties between government power and private enterprise that transform free markets into government-manipulated markets, resulting in markets driven by politics rather than sound business decisions. Newt has to explain why his consulting firm, The Gingrich Group, was paid between $1.6-$1.8 million over a period of eight years for consulting services Gingrich rendered to none other than Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) Freddie Mac. Freddie and big sister GSE Fannie Mae got into big trouble in the housing market, and the taxpayers have bailed them out to the tune of $150 billion and counting. Fannie and Freddie are both asking for more bailout money, even as Congress is slamming F&F for paying millions of dollars in bonuses to F&F executives, as F&F lives on the taxpayer dole. F&F are poster children for crony capitalism.

Gingrich had this to say about some of his consulting fees from Freddie:

When asked at the debate what he did to earn a $300,000 payment in 2006, the former speaker said he “offered them advice on precisely what they didn’t do,” and warned the company that its lending practices were “insane.”

If that's true, good for Newt…but unnamed Freddie Mac officials are disputing that account:

None of the former Freddie Mac officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Gingrich raised the issue of the housing bubble or was critical of Freddie Mac’s business model.

We should withhold judgement until we find out who these anonymous Freddie Mac officials are. After all, Gingrich is running for President, and the anonymous officials could be Democrats looking to derail Gingrich's presidential train. We've already seen what happens to GOP presidential contenders when they make a significant showing in the polls. When Perry was riding high, there was the ridiculous charge about the racist word on a rock at his family's hunting lodge in the 1980's. When Cain reached the top, all of a sudden 14-year old charges of sexual harrassment arose. And how many more times does the media have to discuss the fact that Romney is a Mormon ? That has become particularly nauseating.

There is one former Freddie official who has spoken about Gingrich's work with Freddie on the record:

Gingrich’s first contract with the mortgage company was in 1999, five months after he resigned from Congress and as House speaker, according to a Freddie Mac press release.

His primary contact inside the organization was Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, and he was paid a self- renewing, monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000 between May 1999 until 2002, according to three people familiar with aspects of the business agreement.

During that period, Gingrich consulted with Freddie Mac executives on a program to expand home ownership, an idea Delk said he pitched to President George W. Bush’s White House.

“I spent about three hours with him talking about the substance of the issues and the politics of the issues, and he really got it,” said Delk, adding that the two discussed “what the benefits are to communities, what the benefits could be for Republicans and particularly their relationship with Hispanics.”

That sounds like a pretty far cry from Gingrich calling Freddie policies "insane", and it's no secret that Bush was on board with the goal of increasing home ownership as part of his Ownership Society initiative.

The Bloomberg account makes it clear that Gingrich was never a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, but in the early years of his association with the GSE, it sounds like Gingrich wasn't raising any red flags. It sounds like he was working in concert with Freddie Mac's goals.

As for the later years of Gingrich's Freddie association:

Former Freddie Mac officials familiar with his work in 2006 say Gingrich was asked to build bridges to Capitol Hill Republicans and develop an argument on behalf of the company’s public-private structure that would resonate with conservatives seeking to dismantle it.

He was expected to provide written material that could be circulated among free-market conservatives in Congress and in outside organizations, said two former company executives familiar with Gingrich’s role at the firm. He didn’t produce a white paper or any other document the firm could use on its behalf, they said.

Gingrich's mission was to "build bridges" with disapproving conservatives of the wisdom of Freddie's policies ??? Hmmm. It seems to me that Gingrich SHOULD HAVE BEEN one of those disapproving conservatives.

In summary – AFTER the housing meltdown, Newt Gingrich became a big critic of Fannie and Freddie's loose lending practices. Lots of politicians with their fingers in the wind fall into that category, and we shouldn't trust them for obvious reasons. Newt's problem is, he might be one of them.

When the new Congress convenes, the GOP-led House is planning to move on several fronts.

1. They are going to try to repeal ObamaCare:

The new Republican-controlled House plans to schedule a vote to repeal the sweeping health care overhaul before President Barack Obama delivers his annual State of the Union address late this month, incoming House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said Sunday.

“We have 242 Republicans,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” He added, “There will be a significant number of Democrats, I think, that will join us. You will remember when that vote passed in the House last March, it only passed by seven votes.”

Upton, whose committee will play a key role in the GOP's effort to roll back the law, said that he believes the House may be near the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto.

Regardless of how the repeal vote turns out, the GOP will go after pieces of ObamaCare:

Upton specifically called out the requirement for businesses to complete 1099 tax forms, the individual mandate and the amendment on abortion introduced by Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak. "We will look at these individual pieces to see if we can't have the thing crumble," he said.

This should cause quite a stir. Democrats will fight back:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, appearing on CNN, said “health care reform is going to go down in history as one of the great achievements of this president.”

And Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said repeal is a lost cause for Republicans.

“We cut prescription drug bills for senior citizens by 50 percent,” she told CBS. “We've already made sure that young adults up until they're 26 can be on their parents' insurance. A constituent in my district came up to me a few weeks ago and thanked me for saving her $3,000 a year because she could put her two adult children back on her insurance," she said.

"That's what the Republicans are going to be proposing to repeal this week," Wasserman Schultz added. "It's not going to happen. If it's about jobs and the economy and reducing the deficit, wasting time and money and adding to the deficit by repealing health care reform or on the attempt is irresponsible.”

In order for the Republicans to successfully repeal ObamaCare, I believe they will have to come up with a REPLACEMENT for it, a better idea. If the GOP forgets all about that part of it, they might be doing themselves more harm than good. I'm all for repealing ObamaCare, as long as something better takes it's place. We can't just stick our heads in the sand and pretend spiraling health care costs are not a problem.

2. Rep. Darrell Issa plans to go after wasteful government spending by the Obama administration:

The Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight called President Obama's administration "one of the most corrupt administrations" on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers.

Issa, who as chairman will have subpoena power, said he will seek to ferret out waste across the federal bureaucracy. While he used fiery rhetoric in describing the Obama administration in a series of television interviews Sunday, he said he will focus on wasteful spending, not the prosecution of White House officials.

Asked on "Fox News Sunday" about reports that the White House is staffing up on lawyers to prepare for his oversight hearings, Issa said: "They're going to need more accountants.

"It's more of an accounting function than legal function," Issa said. "It's more about the inspector generals than it is about lawyers in the White House. And the sooner the administration figures out that the enemy is the bureaucracy and the wasteful spending, not the other party, the better off we'll be."

Issa said he plans to lead bipartisan investigations on food and drug safety, as well as Medicare fraud.

"We can save $125 billion in simply not giving out money to Medicare recipients that don't exist for procedures that didn't happen," Issa said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "These are real dollars. Ten percent of the deficit goes out in wasted money – money that doesn't get one person health care in Medicare."

On the CNN show, Issa said: "When I look at waste, fraud and abuse in the bureaucracy and in the government, this is like steroids to pump up the muscles of waste."

Here is a list of investigations Issa has planned:

As the replacement for outgoing Democrat Henry Waxman, Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.

According to an outline of the committee’s hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown.

A look at the preliminary hearing schedule illustrates that Issa plans to stay away from hurling subpoenas at the White House.

In investigating the impact of regulation on job creation, the committee plans to ask why the economy hasn’t “created the private sector jobs the president has promised,” and he’s calling in business leaders to explain “about the government regulations that are doing the most harm to job creation efforts.”

“The committee will examine how overregulation has hurt job creation and whether the administration intends to try and abuse the regulatory process to implement regulations that Congress would reject,” according to an outline of committee hearing topics.

Issa also wants to study why the financial crisis commission couldn’t reach consensus last year. He’d like to call Phil Angelides and former Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), the chair and ranking member of the committee, to determine if there was any agreement on the panel in relation to the cause of the meltdown.

Thar's a new sheriff in town, and his name is Darrell Issa.

3. The Republicans might demand budget cuts in exchange for raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling:

Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, said if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, the “impact on the economy would be catastrophic.”

“I don’t see why anybody’s playing chicken with the debt ceiling,” Goolsbee said today on ABC’s “This Week” program. “If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”

The government is slated to hit the legal limit on borrowing, $14.3 trillion, early this year. Congress must agree to raise that ceiling or the U.S. could be forced to default on its obligations.

After candidates supported by anti-deficit Tea Party activists were elected on pledges to rein in government spending, some lawmakers have said they would demand budget cuts in exchange for voting to raise the debt ceiling.

The U.S. has a $1.3 trillion federal budget deficit. President Barack Obama’s debt-reduction panel failed last month to agree on its chairmen’s recommendations for ways to reduce the annual deficit to about $400 billion in 2015.

The plan would have increased taxes by $1 trillion by 2020 by scaling back or eliminating hundreds of deductions, exclusions or credits such as those allowing homeowners to write off interest on their mortgage payments. It would also have cut individual and corporate income tax rates.

Goolsbee said he anticipates Obama will find common ground with Republicans on legislation to benefit the economy, citing investment incentives and tax cuts for workers and small businesses, and warned against cutting back on spending needed for economic growth.

“The reason the deficit is big this year is because we’re coming out of the worst recession since 1929,” Goolsbee said. “That’s the reason. The longer-run fiscal challenge facing the country is important.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said failing to raise the debt ceiling “would be very bad for the position of the United States in the world at large.” Still, he wouldn’t vote to raise it “until a plan is in place” to deal with debt, Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

If the GOP was paying attention to the last election, they definitely SHOULD demand some budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. How else will the runaway freight train of government spending ever slow down ? The federal government has been kicking the fiscal responsibility can down the road for a long, long time now. It has to stop.

One of the mysteries of this election cycle is how Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) could possibly be leading his congressional opponent, Sean Bielat (R-MA), by 13 points in the polls. I confess I know next to nothing about Bielat, but I do know a lot about the incumbent Frank. Given this knowledge of Rep. Frank, unless Bielat opens his rallies with 'Sieg Heil' or 'Praise Lucifer,' I have to question the sanity of the Massachusetts voters.

A brief history. Barney Frank was at the forefront in pushing the quasi-government enterprise Fannie Mae to get involved in more and more questionable mortgage loans prior to the financial crisis. He resisted all attempts to rein in the systemic risks associated with Fannie Mae's activities, despite repeated warnings. I submit the following video as a memory refresher (for Democrats):

Notice who WAS trying to regulate Fannie Mae and who WASN'T. It flies directly in the face of the liberal claim that the Republicans were anti-regulation. In fact, Republicans were the almost the ONLY ones trying to regulate Fannie and deal with the systemic risk during the Bush years. The Republicans could not, however, overcome the objections of a unified Democratic party against them and get a regulatory bill passed. Nothing happened, and the mortgage meltdown is now history.

Barney Frank's gay lover was a Fannie Mae executive from 1991 to 1998:

The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses "helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs."

Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.

Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.

Three years later, President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today’s economic crisis.

"I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in 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," Clinton said recently.

After being instrumental in blocking regulation over two presidencies, guess who Barney Frank blamed for the lack of regulation, the mortgage meltdown, and the subsequent financial crisis ? If you said "right-wing Republicans," as Thomas Sowell pointed out in his recent column titled, 'Is Barney Frank ?', you win a cigar (one never used by Bill Clinton on Monica's Lewinsky). In his column, 'Is Barney Frank ?: Part II', Sowell shows further the depths of Frank's deception:

When federal regulators uncovered irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting, and in 2004 issued what Barron's magazine called "a blistering 211-page report," Barney Frank lashed out — not at Fannie Mae, but at the regulators who uncovered Fannie Mae's misdeeds. He said "a leadership change" in the regulatory agency was "overdue."

Rather than regulate Fannie Mae, Barney Frank wanted to fire the regulators who uncovered Fannie's wrongdoings. This idiot's actions abetted criminality.

Fast forward to 2010. Guess who is the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee today, the committee that oversees the mortgage and banking industry ? Yes, kiddies, it's STILL Barney fricking Frank, despite Frank's record of aiding and abetting the financial meltdown. Un-be-liev-able. Rewarding absolute failure must be a plus for Democrats these days.

Now that the you-know-what has hit the fan and the American economy crashed and burned in large part due to Frank and his merry band of regulation resisters and bad mortgage pushers, Barney Frank is singing a brand new tune, even though the finanial regulation reform recently passed by Congress and signed by Obama did nothing to regulate Fannie Mae. Frank counts on you forgetting all about the old tune he sang for the last two decades. Now Rep. Bawney Fwank says he wants to abolish Fannie Mae and her little brother Freddie Mac, just in time for the ELECTION. How convenient:

In an appearance on Fox Business Network tonight, Frank said they should be replaced with new programs to support affordable rental housing.

"I think they should be abolished," Frank said. "The only question is what do you put in their place. This is a situation where given the importance they had come to play in housing, you can't tear down the old jail until you build a new one. And that's a process that we've started."

Frank went on: "I have been very critical for a long time that not everybody should be a homeowner. There are people in this society who for economic and frankly social reasons can't and shouldn't be homeowners. I do want some government help to build affordable rental housing."

"There were two problems with the housing market," Frank said. "People were making loans that shouldn't have been made, and Fannie and Freddie were then buying those loans in the market. One of the things we have already done is to take every possible step to stop the bad loans from being made."

Translation – When Frank says he has been very critical for a long time that not everybody should be a homeowner, he means he turned on a dime after the housing crash and is hoping nobody notices what he said and did for all those years before. He hopes nobody notices that Barney Frank led the charge to our mortgage meltdown. Thanks to our lamestream media, lots of people don't know. Barney Frank is emblematic of everything that is wrong with Washington D.C. He couldn't tell the truth if his hair was on fire. He lies, misdirects, never accepts responsibility, and has absolutely no problem with being so profoundly dishonest. He is an amoral slug who would say or do anything to keep himself in power.

And the Massachusetts voters are about to re-elect him. It's astonishing.

Btw, the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have cost taxpayers nearly $200 billion so far. The final cost could go as high as $363 billion over the next three years, according to the agency overseeing those entities, making Fannie/Freddie the single largest bailout hit to the taxpayers by far. Thanks, Barney.

Housing sales fell 27% last month, the biggest drop in 15 years. The official unemployment rate is 9.5% (the real unemployment rate is over 16%, and may be much higher), and weekly unemployment claims rose to their highest level since last november. This year's federal deficit is expected to be $1.3 trillion, the second trillion+ dollar deficit in a row. The country is over $13.2 trillion in debt, the largest dollar debt in American history by far, and it is growing by leaps and bounds. The CBO calculated that President Obama's budgets will add $9.5 trillion to the debt over a decade, over twice as much as any previous admiistration. Most of the states are broke. We are drowning future generations in staggering debt, and we still have $55 trillion in unfunded future entitlement liabilities to deal with, plus ObamaCare looming on the horizon to drastically increase Medicaid spending. The Democrats are looking to impose the largest tax increase in history at the end of the year, during a very weak economy, the weakest in nearly 30 years. Then Obama wants to impose Cap-And-Trade to drive up everyone's energy bills, to "skyrocket" the price of electricity, as Obama said himself. It's almost as if he intends to ruin us. The Democrats are throwing one overhand right after another into the face of our economic futures.

Everybody agrees Obama's stimulus plan didn't have it's intended effect. The White House claimed the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8%, and the Gaffemaster General, VP Joe Biden, said in this "recovery summer," we'd be adding 500,000 jobs per month by now. Clearly, the stimulus didn't come close to those numbers, but borrowing $800 billion to throw around did have some effect. Nobody could spend that much stimulus money with NO result, not even Obama and the Dumbocrats. The problem is, almost all of the stimulus spending only has a temporary effect. When the artificial borrowed stimulus bump runs out at the end of the year, we'll face our ACTUAL economic state (and we'll be another trillion deeper in debt to boot). With economists forecasting flat growth or even a double dip recession THIS year, what will happen when the stimulus funds run out ? Some even think we're in a depression, and point out some comparisons between the Great Depression and now. Not surprisingly, investors are growing wary of the stock market.

The government is running out of avoidance tricks. We can't put interest rates much lower, we can't keep borrowing money to artificially prop us up, and the fed can't print more money to escape reality.

Recovery summer has become recovery bummer, and recovery future is looking more like future shock, when the irresponsibility of these insane fiscal policies (which are actually a lack of fiscal policy) will have to be faced. As they say, "you can run, but you can't hide." We can't hide from our fiscal sins forever. We can only run temporarily, as Obama is doing now. Soon, we'll be out of breath from running, and big bad Mr. Reality will catch up to us. That will be the moment the full weight of our fiscal folly descends down upon us.

All this news led Gaffy Biden to say yesterday,, "no doubt we're heading in the right direction."

Really, Joe ? Then just what in the hell would be the wrong direction ? Mass suicide via poisoned Kool-Aid, or what ? Gaffy must come from the Jim Jones school of economics. Jones wanted to create a socialist paradise on earth too. It didn't work out quite as planned.

Not that I'm pessimistic or anything. I do have a solution – counterfeiting. Print your own money. That will work, and if you get busted, to paraphrase the great economist Thomas Sowell, just tell the feds you weren't counterfeiting, you were engaging in monetary policy. That's what the Federal Reserve calls it when they print money backed by nothing.

Alternately, we could get Congress to start behaving responsibly, but what are the chances of that ?

Today, I ran across an editorial by 2008 Libertarian VP candidate, Wayne Allen Root, called Obama: Bumbling Incompetent…Or Bumbling Marxist ?. In this editorial, Mr. Root lays out a clear step-by-step explanation of how President Obama is going to destroy this country economically. If he is successful, Obama will wreak havoc on the American business sector, cause severe job losses, cause businesses to flee the country, and usher in a second Great Depression as a result. Following are 14 steps Obama wants to take to bring about his reign of terror:

#1) The biggest income tax increase in the history of America will take effect on Jan 1st, 2011. The new tax increase falls almost 100% on small business owners and high-income taxpayers (whose contributions happen to fund Obama’s political opposition). As a result, many more jobs will be lost and more businesses closed.

#2) A dramatic 60% capital gains tax increase (from 15% to 23.8% effective rate, including new universal healthcare taxes) will accompany the big income tax increase above. More jobs will be lost, more businesses closed.

#3) Taxes on dividends will increase from 15% to 39.6%, and then another 3.8% by 2013 for Obama’s new healthcare taxes. Stocks will be crushed and older Americans will be devastated (because they live off dividends, investments, and bank interest). More lives ruined, more jobs lost.

#4) New taxes on income, investments, and even tanning bed users soon take effect to pay for Obamacare. Worse,18,000 new I.R.S. agents will be hired to enforce these taxes (at a cost of billions annually in new government employee salaries, pensions and benefits). More jobs lost.

#5) The pending Cap and Trade legislation threatens dramatic new taxes on anyone who owns a business, owns a home, owns an auto, or buys products manufactured or delivered through the use of energy. Once again, the more you own, the more you'll be taxed. More jobs will be lost, more manufacturing jobs sent overseas, more homes foreclosed.

#6) The pending financial reform bill threatens onerous new rules, regulations and taxes on banks and Wall Street. More jobs will be lost (and more banking and financial jobs sent overseas).

#7) The pending new jobs bill threatens gigantic new taxes on every Sub Chapter S corporation in America. More jobs will be lost and more small businesses ruined.

#8) The threat of a gigantic new national sales tax (VAT) on everything manufactured, bought and sold in America looms large. Fewer jobs, reduced consumer spending, more businesses closed forever.

#9) Obama is pushing for the reduction or elimination of tax deductions (such as mortgage or charitable contributions) for high income earners (mostly small business owners). More jobs lost, reduced charitable contributions, and the real estate industry damaged beyond repair.

#10) The threat of bans or restrictions on offshore oil drilling being put permanently into place. More jobs lost (and more jobs sent overseas where drilling is welcomed). As a bonus for Obama, he gets to ruin the Texas economy.

#11) All signs indicate that Obama will soon propose to take the income cap off FICA (Social Security) taxes. If this were to happen, a successful small business owner (if there are any left) could see his or her FICA taxes alone go from an already bloated and burdensome $15,000 per year to an unimaginable $150,000 (or more). In U.S. history, no taxpayer has ever seen a TEN TIMES tax increase in one year. This devastating nightmare will wipe out small business and cause people that Obama calls “rich” to lose their homes and businesses.

#12) A new I.R.S. law (with the passage of Obamacare) requires business owners to file thousands of new I.R.S. forms each year documenting virtually every expenditure made by their business. As a result of this blizzard of new paperwork, small business faces ruin.

#13) Let’s not forget the gigantic tax hikes on the state and local level for income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes and new taxes disguised as “user fees.” Local taxes are already at levels that taxpayers and small businesses can no longer afford to pay.

#14) Finally, Obama refuses to consider lowering the 2nd highest corporate tax rate (40%) in the industrialized world. As a result, more businesses will choose to leave the U.S. (and more jobs will be sent overseas).

If one set out to deliberately ruin the economy of the United States Of America, one couldn't do much better than the plan Obama has devised. This is doubly true during a recessionary period. He is, as Mr. Root suggests, either a bumbling incompetent or a bumbling Marxist. I'd suggest the two explanations are actually one and the same. Obama is a bumbling incompetent Marxist. Mr. Root even offers a pretty good summation of why this is so:

Each of these taxes and proposed taxes is a job killer. Taken together, the Obama regime’s policies are the equivalent of General Sherman’s march to the sea- leaving a tragic path of destruction in its wake. Obama has launched an unprecedented, overwhelming, death-by-tax assault on the groups that fund fiscally conservative causes and candidates: taxpayers and business owners.

There are only two reasonable explanations. Obama is executing a bumbling Marxist scheme to destroy capitalism, expand government to Soviet-like levels, and turn Americans into dependent serfs begging for government to save them, clothe them and feed them. “Bumbling” because the plan never works- eventually Obama will run out of taxpayers to rob, thereby bankrupting his own programs and bringing down his government. Or the other choice is that he is truly the most incompetent bumbling President in modern history. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Amen. I couldn't have said it better myself. If Obama gets his way, we'll soon be looking back on these recessionary times as the good old days. Obama is a dangerous, incompetent, left-wing fool, who doesn't have a clue about what drives our economy. Hint – it isn't the government. It's all those small business people Obama wants to tax and regulate to death. Be careful what you ask for America, you just might get it. Obama is…One Big Ass Mistake America. We better fix it, and fast. Time is running out.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) has been making quite a name for himself lately.

In the Democratic primaries in South Carolina, the voters nominated a completely unknown Senate candidate, Alvin Greene, who hadn't even campaigned, who hadn't attended the S.C. Democratic convention, who can barely speak coherently, who faces felony obscenity charges, who is unemployed and lives with his father, and who apparently got elected due to him being the first candidate listed on the ballot (Dem voters didn't know who any of the candidates were, according to a Democratic polling firm).

Faced with such a 'stupid is as stupid does' outcome, Rep. Clyburn flew into Democrat face-saving action, immediately accusing Alvin Greene of being a "Republican plant," based upon…well, based upon nothing, other than it sounded to Clyburn like it might work. He had exactly zero evidence upon which to base his claim, and Alvin Greene says he has always been a Democrat.

Naturally, the left-wing blogosphere picked up Clyburn's made-up charge and reported it as if it was stone-cold fact. Damn those dirty Republicans ! They always steal elections ! Just like they did in 2004 and 2000,…and 1988, 1984, 1980, and 1972…and 1712, 1506, and 126 BC !! Damn them !!! The nutroots went foaming-at-the-mouth wild. In other words, the nutroots pursued business-as-usual.

Several top Democrats are calling for an investigation of Greene, and have called for him to step down from the Senate race, where he has about as much chance of defeating incumbent Republican Jim Demint as your company softball team would have of defeating the New York Yankees. The Dems say they want Greene to step down because of the felony charge, but Greene says he's not guilty, and he's not stepping down from anything. In reality, the Dems want Greene to step down because he's an embarassment to them, and the other S.C. Democratic Senate candidate, Vic Rawls, might have a snowball's chance against Demint. You know what they say about the Democrats. They are always looking out for the little guy, and that's why they are trying to overturn the will of the voters in South Caroli…..wait a second. That sounds more like screwing the little guy, just like Dems did in the 2008 presidential primaries, where they excluded entire states from the primary process. Oh well. That was probably Bush's fault, right nutroots ?

Clyburn's "plant" accusations don't stop with Alvin Greene. Rep. Clyburn has come up with no less than THREE plants in South Carolina, including the man who ran against Clyburn, hoo ha. All three "plants" were African-American, and were not backed by the state Democratic party. Apparently, any candidate who wins or runs in a Democratic primary in South Carolina who is not the choice of Clyburn and his Democratic honchos is a "plant." I guess we can't have non-party machine candidates going around running and winning elections. Heavens, no. That might lead to diversity chaos in the Democratic party. Some of these "plants," like Clyburn's opponent, Gregory Brown, actually believe <shudder> that the GOVERNMENT IS SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY. That kind of crazy talk is considered heresy by the Left. No government led by Democrats can spend too much money. Only government's led by Republicans can spend too much money. It's basic (ill) logic.

On sunday's State Of The Union program on CNN, Rep. Clyburn was just the man to explain this (ill) logic to us. He said we need to "look to the future with a little more compassion and bipartisanship," and we need to stop talking about "cutting taxes, cutting taxes, cutting taxes."

Allow me to explain what Clyburn means.

In Demo-speak, "compassion" means the government should be able to steal ever increasing amounts of private wealth, though they use the more genteel-sounding term "redistributing wealth." Regardless of the term they use, they are forcibly taking the money from citizens who earned it and putting it in the government's hands, to be used as the government sees fit. This is the essence of what it means to be a liberal. It's about thievery, er, I mean "compassion."

In Demo-speak, "bipartisanship" means the GOP should shut the hell up and just go along with the Democrats on the "compassion" thing. The end.

In Demo-speak, "cutting taxes" is either a) horrible and racist when Bush did it, or b) help for the working man when Obama did it. Clyburn actually praised Obama's tax cuts on the same CNN program that he railed AGAINST cutting taxes. I think Clyburn is a plant.

Cutting government spending is NEVER an alternative for a James Clyburn. He actually thinks the government isn't spending enough. He said a second stimulus package should be discussed on that CNN program. Liberals actually believe that in a country up to it's ears in debt, with major revenue shortages, with federal spending having literally doubled in 10 short years, with trillion+ deficits with no end in sight, with a major recession that was caused by overspending and overleveraging…..the answer is for the government to SPEND EVEN MORE. This should be coined the Paul Krugman Theory Of Economic Mass Destruction. It's comparable to treating a patient who is going into anaphylactic shock due to a bee sting allergy with a massive injection of more bee venom. It's desirable only if the objective is to KILL THE PATIENT.

To those of James Clyburn's ilk, this is "compassion." To me, it sounds more like death.

On April 16, 2010, the Securities And Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil fraud suit against Goldman Sachs, alleging that the Wall Street investment bank sold mortgage-backed securities to investors that were secretly designed to fail. About a week later, A Senate subcommittee investigating the financial crisis released internal Goldman Sachs e-mails that seemed to support the SEC's allegations that Goldman Sachs was simultaneously selling the securities and betting against them. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich), the chairman of that committee, said "Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market."

I find myself in the unenviable position of offering a partial defense of Goldman Sachs at this point. Imagine for a moment that you work at Goldman Sachs, and have been selling mortgage-backed securities for years. Those securities were very profitable, ever since 1999 Clinton administration legislation (introduced by Republicans and with more Republican than Democratic support in Congress) allowed investment banks like Goldman Sachs into the mortgage market, which was previously illegal. From 1999 forward, a huge housing market bubble was created, and in 2007 that bubble began to burst. Housing prices began to fall dramatically, as did the value of those mortgage-backed securities. If you worked at Goldman Sachs in 2007, wasn't it the smart move to bet against the mortgage market by short-selling on the futures of those securities ? We all know now that it certainly was the smart move. The short-selling of those securities was not illegal. In fact, it's the essence of what Wall Street does. It buys and sells based upon market conditions, and market conditions CHANGE. As Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, wrote in one of the released e-mails, the firm "lost money" on the housing market, "then made more than we lost because of shorts." In another e-mail, Goldman's Chief Financial Officer wrote of making $50 million in one day via short-selling. In another e-mail, Goldman executives wrote about how one subprime lender was facing "wipeout," and another's demise was "imminent." Another executive said "sounds like we will make some serious money," by short-selling.

If there was any fraud at Goldman Sachs, it wasn't because they were selling short, it was because they were selling short without advising their customers to do the same. They were still selling the mortgage-backed securities they were betting against. That determination will be left to the courts.

This leads me to the next part of Sen. Carl Levin's statement condemning Goldman Sachs:

"Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis," Levin said. "They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients."

Sounds pretty bad, but let's put it in perspective. Goldman Sachs did about $500 MILLION worth of residential mortgage business in 2007, less than 1% of the firm's business. By contrast, the quasi-government agency Fannie Mae's mortgage portfolio was in excess of $700 BILLION as of August 2008. Fannie Mae was the largest bundler and securitizer of mortgage loans in the country, BY FAR. Goldman Sachs is a small fish by comparison. Where are Sen. Levin's condemnations of Fannie Mae ??? Fannie (and her little brother Freddie Mac) kept bundling and selling those "toxic mortgages" right up until the moment the financial system imploded. Fannie Mae executives knew the market was collapsing. Where are the fraud charges against Fannie ? There are none, and to add insult to injury, Fannie Mae is exempted from regulation under the financial regulation reform legislation working it's way through Congress. In addition, Fannie Mae, as a Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE), was also exempt from regulations in place for private financial institutions. For example, private firms had to maintain a capital/asset ratio of greater than or equal to 3%. A GSE like Fannie did not, placing it a greater risk than the private firms, thus placing the entire housing sector at significantly greater risk.

Btw, to my knowledge, the so-called financial regulation reform under consideration does NOT prohibit investment firms like Goldman Sachs from remaining in the mortgage market (though Goldman Sachs has become a bank holding company now). It does not re-implement the laws in place from the Great Depression (Glass-Steagal) up until the 1999 Clinton legislation (Gramm-Leach-Bliley). Fannie Mae has now gone into government consevatorship, but there are no plans to liquidate it. A July 30, 2008 law enabling expanded regulatory authority over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac increased the national debt ceiling by $800 billion. In other words, the taxpayers are massively on the hook for the excessive risks placed on our financial system by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were/are effectively run by the government. THAT is the systemic risk, not Goldman Sachs.

But our politicians tell us we're supposed to be really angry at Goldman Sachs, and with tons of media reinforcement, we have largely bought into the misdirection. I even bought into it myself, more than I should have. I apologize for actually believing anything any politician ever says. I should know better by now. We're supposed to be angry at Wall Street, with good reason, but why the hell aren't we angry at the government who did this to us ?

There's a lot wrong with the incestuous relationship between Goldman Sachs and the federal government. No question there. Goldman Sachs received over $12 billion in TARP money it didn't need (Goldman Sachs made a net profit of $13.39 billion in 2009 and also made a profit in 2008). Goldman Sachs repaid it's TARP loan plus interest within several months of receving it. Many of the banks getting TARP funds didn't need them, and were forced to take them. The government was playing a good game of charades with those bailouts.

The latest estimate of the bank bailout losses is down to $87 billion. The single largest loss is the GSE's, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ($85 billion). The second largest loss is the help given to homeowners facing foreclosure ($49 billion). Next is AIG ($48 billion). Then General Motors ($28 billion). The private financial institutions have repaid their TARP loans plus interest, actually MAKING A PROFIT for the Treasury of $115 billion, offsetting the real losses.

So tell me, who should we be the most angry at…banks who made the risky loans the government wanted them to make (to increase homeownership so the politicians could pat themselves on the back)…or the government (both parties), who set the entire financial house of cards in motion, who legislated the financial crisis into existence, and who constantly demonize the private sector while never placing any responsibility on itself for it's massive irresponsibility ? That government irresponsibility ($12.8 trillion national debt, unrestrained spending, and exploding unfunded entitlement liabilities) has placed the entire future of the country at systemic and excessive risk.

Placing complete confidence in politicians to do the right thing is like relying on a referee who has bet on the game he's officiating to call the game fairly. Odds are pretty good that won't happen. The odds are even greater that politicians who are vying for re-election and partisan power over the entire country are not going to be honest. Much greater. Off the charts. Question everything they do and say, especially the ones who are currently IN power. They are the most dangerous.

Welcome To The Machine - On the same day President Obama invited Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) to the White House to pressure him to switch his vote on health care reform, Obama appointed Matheson's brother, Scott Matheson, to a judgeship on the 10th Circuit Court Of Appeals. I'm sure that was an entirely random, coincidental event with absolutely no underlying political calculations whatsoever…not at all similar to the way things are done in Obama's old stomping grounds…not at all similar to the Chicago way….not at all. This is the most ethical administration ever…especially when they aren't lying about everything.
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Global Warming Kettle Calls Pot Black – "First of all, we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody is like — a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, see, look at that, there’s all this snow on the ground, this doesn’t mean anything. I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer; it means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow." – Barack "The Weatherman" Obama.

The glaring problem with Obama's "everything is climate change now" rhetoric is that Vancouver doesn't usually get much snow in February. The average temperature there in February is 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Not exactly snow weather, and a temp of 55 degrees is just an example of normal weather variation. Exit questions – What if Sarah Palin said something this dumb ? How many months would it be before the media stopped talking about it ?
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Nominee For Idiot Of The Year - The following video shows MSNBC talker Dylan Ratigan "interviewing" a Tea Party representative, and hijacking his own interview by refusing to allow the Tea Party guy to answer the questions put to him. Ratigan instead used the segment as a transparent ploy to parrot the constant MSNBC propaganda point that the Tea Party movement is a racist movement.

This might be a new low in what passes for journalism. Either that, or Ratigan fancies himself the next Keith Olbermann, a dubious aspiration at best.

While I'm on the subject of the Tea Party movement…I keep hearing from liberals that the Tea Parties are chock full of racist signs, and having attended Tea Parties, I haven't seen any. Not one. I have seen a couple signs on the internet that COULD be interpreted as racist (and could also be liberal plants), out of the hundreds of thousands of signs from which to choose at Tea Party events. Can some liberal please show me all these racist Tea Party signs ??? I really want to see what all the fuss is about.
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A Good Day To Die – "Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good." – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) link

I've heard of the bigotry of soft expectations, but this is ridiculous. By Reid's standard, if only 20,000 people lost their jobs next month, that would be, as Tony the Tiger used to say, "GRRREEAAT !"

Time for a new Senate Majority Leader. This one's broken.
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Rules ? We Don't Need No Stinking Rules - From NBC News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today the American people ought to know more about what she called "total obstruction" by the Republican Party in the Senate. Referring to Sen. Jim Bunning's hold-up of unemployment benefits earlier this week, Pelosi said, "It's not about rules, it's about a decision they've made to obstruct."

Here we have Pelosi admitting that the Pay-Go rules passed by the Democrats a couple weeks ago are basically meaningless. They bypassed them the first time they had the opportunity to enforce them, and then they have the gall to portray the one Senator who called the Dems on their dishonesty an obstructionist. Wow. Words fail me.

Time for a new Congress. This one's broken.
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Obama As The New Bush - Students in Jakarta, Indonesia are protesting President Obama's upcoming visit to that country. Obama previously has been very popular in Indonesia, having spent part of his childhood in Jakarta. From the Associated Press:

Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta's parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to this predominantly Muslim country.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama's head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Protest organizer Ahmad Irhamul Fikri, spokesman for the Coordinating Board for Campus Proselytizing Institute, said bigger rallies will be staged next Friday in more Indonesian cities ahead of Obama's March 20-22 visit.

If there's a bright side here…maybe this will shut up some of the fringe element nuts known as the Birthers, who think Obama is a foreign-born Muslim who wants to establish a Caliphate here in America, or something.

The official proclamation from the media is that President Obama is a moderate now, after word came from the White House that Obama will propose a three-year federal spending freeze in tonight's State Of The Union address. The official proclamation claims that the President got the message from the Massachusetts senatorial election, and now he's taking bold steps to deal with our disastrous deficit/debt problem, the one thing certain to destroy the economic future of this country.

Let's scrutinize the official proclamation for accuracy.

1. Obama's spending freeze would only cut non-defense discretionary spending. This is the small part of the federal budget, representing only about 20% of federal spending. It excludes nearly all the major expenditures, such as Social Security, Medicare, other entitlements, and defense. Over ten years, the White House says this spending freeze would save $250 billion, but the White House isn't proposing a ten-year freeze, it's proposing a three-year freeze, from 2011 through 2013. Estimated savings – about $15 billion per year for three years. To put this in perspective, the deficit for FY2009 was $1.5 TRILLION. The estimated deficit for FY2010 is $1.35 TRILLION. Obama's spending freeze is like taking a drop of water out of a bucket-full, it's so minor. If this is an example of Obama being a moderate, we're in trouble.

2. Obama already INCREASED non-defense discretionary spending by about $100 billion during his first year in office. In FY2009, President Bush's last budget, that spending was $589 billion. Obama jumped it to $687 billion for FY2010, and he did it during a recessionary period of no inflation. That's not moderate either. That's standard liberal big government policy.

3. Prior to announcing the three-year spending freeze, Obama had already submitted budgets to Congress for the next three years. Those budgets had called for REDUCTIONS in non-defense discretionary spending after FY 2010. As Alex Conant explains:

In the budget proposal that President Obama submitted to Congress last year, his budget office already projected actual cuts and freezes in “non-defense” discretionary spending for the next three years. That’s in part because of the huge increase in that area of spending that the President requested (and received) for the current fiscal year. To be specific: FY2009 (President Bush’s last budget) had $589 billion in non-defense discretionary spending. That number jumped to $687 billion in FY2010 (Obama’s first budget), and then drops to $641 billion in FY2011, $622 billion in FY2012 and $625 billion in FY2013. So for the White House to now boast that it will freeze non-defense discretionary spending is hardly news. If anything, it’s backtracking on its earlier plans to actually cut that area of spending.

By my math, if Obama freezes spending at the FY2010 level, he will actually be spending $173 billion more than his own previous budget proposals called for. Still sound moderate ???

4. Also excluded from Obama's spending freeze will be the rest of his stimulus package (which has now swelled from $787 billion to $862 billion, according to the CBO), the massive spending of ObamaCare if it passes (at least a trillion over ten years and most likely WAY more), and a second stimulus package that is being contemplated ($174 billion). I don't see anything moderate there either.

There's nothing at all moderate about Barack Obama. Those who say there is are playing their typical game of 'Let's Pretend.'

Still, this spending freeze that isn't…this drop in the bucket…this $15 billion pretend spending cut amidst trillions in defcits and massive federal spending and entitlement increases….has liberals in an uproar. As the Nobel-prize winning Princeton professor, NY Times columnist, and alleged economist, Paul Krugman, said of the imaginary spending freeze, "this is appalling on every level." President Clinton's former Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, actually had the audacity (of a dope) to refer to Obama's move as "fiscal austerity." These guys REALLY like to play 'Let's Pretend.' There has been nothing austere about Obama's fiscal policies to date. Nothing. The reactions of Krugman and Rubin are typical of the liberals, er, I mean progressives. You see, progressives have two fiscal scenarios:

1) During lean economic times like this, they advocate massive government spending and tax increases (like Obama's bank tax, health care taxes, carbon tax, etc, etc).

2) By contrast, during flush economic times, they advocate…um….massive government spending and tax increases.

See the difference ? I don't, but somehow progressives do. They must call them progressives because they progressively take away your income, progressively take away your liberty, progressively take away your rights, and progressively ruin America. I can't think of any other reason to call them progressives on the fiscal front.

Far from being a moderate, Obama is the biggest liberal to ever hold the office of President, by far. His little kabuki theater of fiscal responsibility shouldn't fool anyone.

P.S. – Speaking of progressives taking away your rights, I see the progressive anti-free speech crusade is continuing. They are still trying to stop groups from airing ads on television. This time they are trying to censor Tim Tebow's mother. They don't like her Super Bowl ad, where she says she's glad she didn't listen to the doctors who recommended she abort the future Heisman trophy winner. Progressives know we can't have any crazy talk like that floating around, with mothers going around saying they're glad they had their babies and stuff. With this brilliant move, progressives have now placed themselves solidly in the anti-life, anti-free speech camp. You couldn't make this stuff up, nobody would believe it. They are not only against freedom of speech now, they are against human beings as well.

Every time I hear President Obama or any other Democrat blame George W. Bush for the recession, it makes my head want to explode. It is so dishonest that words can barely describe it. Yes, Bush was the President when it happened, but Bush didn't put the policies in place that made it happen. For the last 16 months, I've asked every liberal who said 'it's Bush's fault' to tell me what Bush policy or policies caused the recession, and I'm still waiting for an answer. They got next to nothing (except maybe for Greenspan and Bernanke keeping interest rates too low, which is Fed policy, not White House policy), because there is next to nothing. I don't say this because I'm a Bush fan. I'm not one. I say this because I have a fondness for the truth.

To find out what did cause the recession, consider this New York Times article from September 30th, 1999, titled Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending. The author's name is Steven A. Holmes, and his words in 1999 were amazingly prophetic:

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

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

"Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements," said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. "Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market."

Here we have the Clinton administration and Fannie Mae (run almost entirely by Democrats) wiping out credit requirements in mortgage lending. I'm not sure how this was Bush's fault.

Now, guess when the housing bubble started really exploding ???????

It started exploding in, you guessed it, 1999, the same year the easy credit policies were put in place. Here's a graph of the housing bubble:

That darned Bush. He created the housing bubble before he even became President. Man, that guy is insidious.

Now listen to more from the New York Times article quoted above. The author describes what could happen with the easy credit policies instituted by the government. He sounds like Nostradamus with this observation:

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

"From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us," said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry."

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers

As I've been saying for almost two years, the government caused the recession with it's policies and pressuring of the banks. Yet, have you heard even one government official cop to it, especially on the Democratic side of the aisle ? I haven't heard even one Democrat say, 'you know, we instituted some really bad policies, which almost brought down the entire financial system. Our bad.' No, instead you hear them say 'it's Bush's fault.'

By the way, the American Enterprise Institute, who warned that the easing of credit could lead to failures and bailouts of the financial industry, is one of those mean conservative groups, the ones Obama continually says are responsible for "the failed policies of the past." I question who is truly responsible for those failed policies, and I know it wasn't Bush.

Some Democrats are no doubt thinking at this point, 'okay, but Bush did nothing to stop the problem. Ha !!!'

But Bush did do something to stop the problem. When the Bush administration saw Fannie Mae spinning out of control in 2003, he tried to scale it back. The following is from a September 11, 2003 New York Times article, and describes the actions Bush wanted to take.

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

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

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

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

"There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan.

But alas, the Bush plan was blocked. Who were the opponents of the Bush plan to reform Fannie and Freddie to manage the exploding risk ???? The NY Times article tells us:

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

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

That would be the same Barney Frank who now says it's all Bush's fault. Sure Barney, whatever you say. Frank is one of those guys who you can always tell is lying…..his lips move.

In 2005, Republicans again brought forward legislation to reign in Fannie and Freddie. At that time, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said of Fannie and Freddie, "We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk." Democrats blocked that legislation in committee.

Yet Obama blames it all on Bush, and has said so about a thousand times by now. He got elected President by saying it. The problem is, it was never true. Bush wasn't a dictator. He couldn't act alone, and the Democrats blocked reform at every turn.

As Congress decides whether or not to keep Ben Bernanke as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, it's also helpful to know that Bernanke got almost everything wrong leading up to the recession too. He backed the easy credit policies and downplayed the extent of the risk. So, naturally, the Democrats want to keep him. In Bernanke's defense, he's made the right moves since the economic collapse, though I'm not sure there were any different moves for him to make.

And so the fictional narrative of the Democrats and the Obama administration goes on and on and on……it's all Bush's fault. The 'failed policies of the past' blather. It's nothing but a wall of noise, misdirection away from the real truth.

It would be nice if we had a media in this country to set the record straight. The recession was only the biggest economic story since 1929. I guess that's not as important as Jon and Kate plus eight, or whatever their names are, or the fact that Sarah Palin goes moose hunting. That's the real news.

Our priorities are just perfect. In the next election cycle, thanks to the Citizens United v. FEC ruling, maybe some corporation will air an ad on television exposing the truth that the media keeps so well hidden. And maybe that's what the Democrats are so afraid of. So afraid that they vote against freedom of speech to keep dissenting opinions off the air.

Democrats have been telling us that Harry Reid's comments about President Barack Obama were NOT racist. Reid said Obama could become President because he was "light skinned" and had "no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one." Dems also tell us that Bill Clinton's remarks about Barack Obama were NOT racist. Clinton told Ted Kennedy that "a few years ago, this guy [Obama] would have been getting us coffee." Dems also tell us that VP Joe Biden's comments about Obama were NOT racist. Biden said Obama was "clean" and "articulate." In trying to make sense of these new standards for non-racism the Democrats have created, it suddenly hit me…..I am light skinned with no Negro dialect unless I want to have one (aka, white). I'm also clean, articulate enough, and I know how to make coffee……………..OMG ! I'm qualified to be President Of The United States ! Plus, I have a few qualities our current Prez does not have. I have worked extensively in the private sector and have run a successful business. Holy cats ! Maybe I'm OVER-qualified.
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For anyone who did not see John Stossel's program about crony capitalism on the Fox Business Network last night, you really missed something. The program will air again on friday. Don't miss it, even though the depravity of our federal government, exposed by Stossel, might make you ill. You will see how big government works hand-in-hand with big business to distort the free market, discourage innovation, beat down the little guy, and rape the taxpayers in the process. You will see how the government picks winners and losers in business. Some of the winners are – big tobacco, big pharma, big health insurance, one window company over all the others, big toy companies. See how big business writes the government regulations that benefit themselves. It is absolutely perverse, and as always, the ONLY solution is to limit government power over our lives.
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Related to Stossel's story about crony capitalism, some people might want to rethink labeling President Obama as a socialist, or at least amend it. In light of how Obama and company are either taking over or micromanaging business and the market, consider the following definition (which doesn't apply only to Obama and the Democrats, not by a long shot. That party called the Republicans does it too).

Fascism – a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology.

Sound familiar ?
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After the government bailed out every big business in sight over the last 16 months or so (see – fascism and crony capitalism), President Demagogue Obama gave a speech last night where he pretended to be a friend to the people (lol) by calling for a new tax on the banks. Here's President Demagogue Obama:

"We want our money bank and we are going to get it," [Obama] said, surrounded by members of his economic team.

Obama said his commitment is to "recover every single dime the American people are owed. And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people."

Sounds good, right ? After all, we're only punishing those mean old bankers. How can that not be good ?

Here's how. First, most of the large banks have already paid back those TARP funds with interest, resulting in a net profit for the taxpayers, yet they will still be hit with Obama's new tax. Second, don't forget that many banks were forced to accept TARP funds from the government, even when they didn't want them. They will be hit with Obama's new tax too. Third, the ones who will really pay the bank tax are THE CUSTOMERS OF THE BANKS, in other words, the taxpayers themselves. Obama will be getting our money back by TAXING US more. Fourth, it wasn't only banks that received bailout funds. There's GM, GE, Fannie Mae, etc. Where is their tax ? Thanks, President Demagogue, but no thanks.

Obama continued:

"Our country has endured the deepest recession we've faced in generations, and much of the turmoil was caused by irresponsibility on the part of banks and financial institutions,"

Yes, much of the turmoil was caused by irresponsible lending on the part of banks and financial institutions…………….but why can't anyone on Capitol Hill ever fess up to the fact that THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WANTED AND ENCOURAGED THEM TO DO IT ? The entire financial house of cards surrounding the housing market and the credit crisis was legislated into existence by the freaking Congress of the United States, starting all the way back in the Carter administration and never stopping. Prior to Congress manipulating the market, we had usury laws. We didn't have subprime mortgages. We didn't have Fannie Mae securitizing, bundling, and selling half the loans in the country. We didn't have commercial banks in the mortgage market. We didn't have Congress fining banks and denying mergers for not making enough loans to poor people. When is a presidential administration or a Congress going to admit that they brought the whole recession into existence with their boneheaded policies to "help" people ? Damn, they must think we're stupid.

Btw, President Demagogue. The country is $12 trillion in debt, and you are on target to add another $9-10 trillion to that number. WE WANT OUR MONEY BACK. So do our children, whose futures you are mortgaging. You can start by not spending all our money in the first place, you phony populist mouthbreather.
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Maybe we need a dark-skinned black person for President. One with a Negro dialect who can add two plus two and come up with four. That would be a great improvement.

When times get tough, as in the current recession, businesses are forced to cut back. They halt expansion plans, reign in expenses, and lay off workers. We've seen a lot of that in the last couple years, as over 7 million people have lost their jobs. Individuals also cut back on expenses.

However, there is one group of people who have done quite well during the "worst economic downturn since the Great Depression," as President Obama would say. That group of people is the government itself. Far from cutting back, the government has been expanding and handing out big raises during these harsh times. The rich government bureaucrats are getting richer. As USA Today reports:

The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.
Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.
Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

In 18 months, the number of federal employees making over $100K has increased 46%. The number making over $150K has more than doubled. There ain't no recession in the federal government, baby. Just caviar wishes and champagne dreams. While private sector employment dropped by 6.3% during the recession, employment in the federal government increased by 9.8%, and federal government employees saw their overall salaries increased by 6.6%.

That's because the government is looking out for YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. Big Brother loves you (or at least Big Brother loves your money). No wonder over 90% of President Obama's cabinet appointments have no private sector business experience. Who needs it ? They are doing just fine living off the forced largesse of the rest of us. They are the elites, you see. We are nothing but the great unwashed masses living in flyover country.

Here's a little ditty from the USA Today story about one particular government bureaucracy, the Transportation Department:

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

How about that for profiting from the recession ?

At least one grumpy Republican has a problem with federal workers living high off the hog with our money while we struggle to make ends meet. Go figure. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said, “There’s no way to justify this to the American people. It’s ridiculous.” C'mon now, Jason, don't be such a buzzkill. Besides, you represent "the failed policies of the past." Haven't you ever heard of Marie Antoinette ? Let them eat cake. Our fearless government leaders know, as Mel Brooks would say, 'it's good to be the King,' and it's pretty good to be All The King's Men too (hmmm. That phrase sounds familiar).

And as P.T. Barnum would say, 'there's a sucker born every minute.' That's you, America. You're the marks. BOHICA, and God bless. Just keep telling yourself it's Change You Can Believe In. That's the ticket.

1. How can President Obama hold a jobs summit and not invite the Chamber Of Commerce ? That's like holding a football game and forgetting to invite the offense.

2. How can the unemployment rate drop from 10.2% to 10% when 11,000 more jobs were lost in november 2009 ?

3. From 1776 to 1913, the value of the dollar increased by 13%. In 1913, the Federal Reserve was implemented. Since 1913, the value of the dollar has dropped by 92%. Why do we have a Federal Reserve ?

4. Why would the President announce a withdrawal date of july 2011 from a war that is not yet won ?

5. Why would President Obama call the november 2009 jobs report "the best jobs report since december 2007" and talk about White House administration officials hugging each other in joy over the good news, when the november unemployment rate is 10% and the december 2007 unemployment rate was 4.9% ? FYI – the january 2008 unemployment rate was also 4.9%.

6. Why are the extramarital affairs of golfer Tiger Woods a big news story ?

7. If the Federal Reserve prints money out of thin air, backed by nothing, in order to, say, lend $85 billion to AIG, and then AIG pays back that money from profits, isn't the net effect nothing but a devaluation of the dollar ?

8. Isn't a devaluation of the dollar nothing but a hidden tax on the assets of all Americans ?

9. If a citizen continually spends more money than he/she makes, he/she will go bankrupt. How is it any different when the government does the same thing, except that the government will take all the citizens down along with it ?

10. Why would we hand health care over to government control when the part of health care the government does control (Medicare/Medicaid) is already so far in the red ?

11. How can the Obama stimulus possibly be working when it is based upon money borrowed or printed out of thin air, backed by nothing, and is therefore entirely artificial ? (See questions #3, #7, and #8).

12. If question #11 is too confusing, perhaps this will help simplify the matter. Does a man up to his neck in credit card debt improve his financial situation by getting more credit cards ?

13. What is wrong with asking the President of the United States to produce his original birth certificate ?

14. Is there any major Obama policy that is supported by the American people ?

15. Why don't we just put Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in front of a firing squad and save everyone a lot of time and money ?

16. How do tax increases ever help the private sector economy ?

17. Shouldn't there have to be at least one act of Tea Party-related violence (from the Tea Party side) before the media denounces the crazy, violent, extremist Tea Partiers ?

18. On the same subject, why is it considered crazy and extreme to be in favor of fiscal responsibility, liberty, and the U.S. Constitution, as the Tea Partiers are ? What does that say about the state of our country ?

19. On the jobs front, which Obama policies are pro-business ?

20. Why are Democrats now in favor of cutting Medicare, when they've been against Medicare cuts for four decades ?

Here's President Obama doing his best Judge Roy Bean impersonation during an NBC interview:

NBC: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — can you understand why it is offensive to some for this terrorist to get all the legal privileges of any American citizen?
Obama: I don’t think it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.

Vintage Bean – we'll give him a fair trial, and then we'll hang him. What a shining example of American justice.

I'm still waiting for any reporter to ask the obvious followup question…what if KSM is found not guilty ? Will we let him go free ?
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In a related event, the group Organizing For America, formerly known as Obama For America, formerly known as Soiled Panties For America, has identified a true danger to our country. No, it's not KSM coming to New York City to espouse his jihadist hate, or homegrown jihadist Nidal Hasan shooting 40 people at Fort Hood (Obama tried to delay the Congressional investigation into Hasan's massacre. Kudos to Joe Lieberman and others for having none of that). No, those things aren't dangers to America. The REAL danger to America is, wait for it………Sarah Palin's book tour.

"It's dangerous," Organizing for America Director Mitch Stewart said of Palin's book tour. He continued:
"Remember, this is the person who coined the term 'Death Panels' — and opened the flood gates for months of false attacks by special interests and partisan extremists. Whatever lie comes next will be widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform."

Stewart asks supporters to help raise $500,000 to "push back against Sarah Palin and her allies."

Remember, Palin's book isn't even a political tract. It's just a memoir, yet the libs are still going batty over it. I guess free speech IS dangerous to the Soiled Panties For America group, but I'm thinking that's THEIR problem. Btw, the Death Panels will be trying to figure out how to cut half a trillion bucks out of Medicare if the health care reform bill passes, in order that it doesn't "add a dime to the deficit."
====
Next up is Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) telling one lie after another about passing the health care reform bill that Americans are against:

Let's review.

Reid said, "everyone agrees we must move forward (with the health care reform bill)."

The truth – a recent CNN poll showed that 72% of Americans are against the Democrats health care bill. Only 26% support it.

Reid said, "our plan saves lives, saves money, and saves Medicare."

The truth – the bill cuts nearly $500 billion from Medicare, and will cost $849 billion. The $849 billion figure isn't even accurate, because the benefits don't kick in until 2014. If the bill is scored from when the benefits start, it costs more like $1.5-2 trillion. More lies and number fudging from the Democrats. Even individual health care premiums rise with this bill.

Reid said, "They'll see the Republican alternative, which I'm sorry to say is non-existent, so obviously it keeps our broken system just the way it is, and let's it get even worse."

The truth – Republicans have offered an alternative, and it drives down costs and insurance premiums, which was supposed to be one of the primary goals of health care reform. The obvious shortfall of the GOP plan is that it doesn't cover as many of the uninsured as the Democrats plan does, but it's actually the Dems plan that makes health care costs rise.

Harry "the Iraq war is lost" Reid never tells the truth about anything. If any Senator loses his seat in the 2010 elections, I hope it's Reid.
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Back when the stimulus package was passed, President Obama claimed that 90% of the jobs created or saved would be in the private sector, and that unemployment would not go past 8%. Both of those claims are demonstrably false, and the administration's claim that 650,000 or a million jobs have been created or saved (the number changes depending on which administration official you talk to) have been exposed as wild exaggerations. Still, I thought the recent attacks by Republican Congressmen on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were over-the-top and politically motivated. You can't expect jobs to turn around this quickly during a recession this serious, and there are some encouraging signs that the recession has bottomed out (for now. The real recession/depression is coming a few years down the road, due to our continued exploding debt). Another problem going forward is our loose fiscal policy, and here's an exchange between Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Geithner that delves into that issue:

Hang on, America. It's going to be a bumpy ride. Anyone who thinks our problems have been solved by merely printing or borrowing tons more money, as our government has done, is in for a very rude awakening.

Do you believe our federal government is competent ? Do you think it's doing a good job of solving our problems ? Are we getting our money's worth ? Let's run through a checklist.

The government declared a war on poverty about 45 years ago. How'd that work out ? We may not have an exit strategy from Afghanistan yet, but you'd think we'd have one for the war on poverty after all these years. Nope.

What about the war on drugs ? We've put a lot of American citizens in prison on drug charges, giving us the highest incarceration rate in the world here in the land of the free, but drugs are still everywhere. If you want to find illegal drugs in America, you don't have to look very hard.

How about the problem of illegal immigration ? I bet you didn't know that the government fixed that problem back in 1986 with the Immigration Reform And Control Act. Listen to this excerpt from the signing statement from that Act, and tell me if it sounds at all familiar to any discussions of the issue we are having today:

In 1981 this administration asked the Congress to pass a comprehensive legislative package, including employer sanctions, other measures to increase enforcement of the immigration laws, and legalization. The act provides these three essential components. The employer sanctions program is the keystone and major element. It will remove the incentive for illegal immigration by eliminating the job opportunities which draw illegal aliens here. We have consistently supported a legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America. The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.

In 1986, we had approximately 2.7 million illegal immigrants. Now the estimate is around 13 million, and we're having the exact same discussions about illegal immigration that we had 23 years ago. Good job, government.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Some of you might be thinking of all the super neato government programs that have been put in place to help us, like the Social Security ponzi scam, or Medicare, which is going broke. Plus, Social Security and Medicare comprise the lion's share of our unfunded liabilities, which, when added to our stated national debt of $11.7 trillion, make the real national debt around $56.4 trillion (note – the national debt figures are outdated as soon as they are printed because the debt is rising so fast. The real national debt might be over $58 trillion by now).

FYI – If you want to see the startling truth behind the U.S. economy, check out the U.S. Debt Clock. We are becoming a hollowed out shell of an economic power. It can't last. America, as it stands, is not sustainable (and our idiotic mainstream media wonders what all the protesting is about. "It must be racism," they say. Why do they call those media types "the elite" anyway ? They sound like a bunch of imbeciles to me).

Our government has done a bang up job of not eliminating poverty, drugs, and illegal immigration. It has also done a fine job of living beyond it's means and selling us down the river with massive debt that will destroy the hopes of future generations. It was also instrumental in creating the housing bubble that led to the current recession.

So, obviously, the correct path to follow now is to hand another 17% of our economy over to that same government to "fix" health care, right ? I mean, the government has such an excellent track record of solving economic problems (NOT). Much better than that miserable failure known as the free market (that made us the wealthiest country in the history of the world). After all, the free market has failed to rein in health care costs, right ? Wrong. The government has inserted itself into health care to such an extent that the free market isn't really functioning in health care. The government got into health care in a big way in 1965, and it's influence has grown ever since. This is also the same time period that health care costs have spiraled out of control.

I was listening to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday on television talking about how there isn't enough competition among private health care insurers, how some states are dominated by only a few insurance companies. What Schumer didn't bother to mention was that insurers are limited by law from competing on a national level, across state lines. So, we have the government restricting private health insurance choice on the one hand, and then complaining that there isn't enough choice on the other hand. I don't know how some of these politicians peddle this nonsense with a straight face. Schumer, of course, wasn't advocating to open up competition on a national level among diverse insurance companies. No, because that would make sense. We can't have that. Instead, Schumer was advocating for a public health insurance option, where the government competes directly against the private sector, as if that's even possible. It isn't. Schumer kept saying that government competing with private industry is fine, as long as there's "a level playing field." Schumer said that with a straight face too, somehow. The idea that there could ever be a level playing field between the federal government and the private sector is absurd on it's face, as is Chuck Schumer. A private industry trying to compete with the federal government in health care insurance would be like trying to play a football game against a government team, where the government got to pick the players on both teams, got to pick the referees, got to change the rules of the game after every play, and made your team pay the expenses of it's team. There's little doubt who would win the game with such a "level playing field."

I'd have much more respect for the politicians peddling the public health care option if they'd just tell the truth about it. It's not about "keeping the insurance companies honest" any more than Medicare was about "giving Seniors a choice" in 1965. It's about government control. Don't lie to me and tell me anything different.

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) computed the day of the year when all the costs of government at all levels are paid for. ATR calls it Cost Of Government Day. This year, that day fell on August 12, 2009. It has taken from January 1st until now to pay for all the costs of federal, state, and local government, plus the regulatory burdens imposed by the government. This year's Cost Of Government Day was almost a full month later than it was in 2008. The biggest reason for the change was the recession, which sparked a massive Keynesian government spending spree (TARP, stimulus, etc). Another reason is the unchecked growth of unfunded entitlement liabilities (Medicare, Social Security, etc).

This year, the cost of government consumed 61.34% of national income. Working people toil 224 days of the year to pay for their government. You can view the Cost Of Government Day report for 2009 here. It makes for some very interesting and disturbing reading.

Put in it's simplest terms, this means that we are becoming slaves to incremental government tyranny. ObamaCare and Cap-and-Trade are some of the next steps in that planned process.

The breakdown of Cost Of Government Day is as follows:
- We work 111 days to pay for federal spending.
- We work 49 days for state and local spending.
- We work 42 days for federal regulations.
- We work 23 days for state and local regulations.

Cost Of Government Day varies from state to state, of course, because each state and locality has a differing burden. The state with the least burden (most free) in 2009 was Alaska (where that radical Sarah Palin governed. No wonder liberals hate her). Predictably, the states with the highest government burdens (least free) were liberal states, with Connecticut being the highest, followed by New Jersey, New York, and California. Liberals LOVE to give their hard-earned money to the government (well, actually, they love to give other people's hard-earned money to the government). Liberals exhibit a plantation mentality, with the government playing the role of master, and the liberals playing the happy slaves whose every need is met by Massuh (at the price of their liberty and free choice). This somehow makes sense to them, though I can never understand WHY it makes sense to them. I run from it like I'm headed for the Underground Railroad.

When you're working 7-8 months per year just to pay off the government burdens, it's only natural that you will be poorer than you'd be otherwise, but somehow liberals can never figure this out either. They are always clamoring for more and more government spending, taxation, and regulation. It's their version of Stockholm Syndrome. They loves them some Massuh. Massuh is SO very good and kind. Massuh is SO very smart.

In an irony so thick you could cut it with a knife, liberals, the willing slaves, call people "racists" when they resist the big government takeovers being planned by President Barack Obama. They actually think it's racist to want to be free from government tyranny, all because Obama's skin is black. They can't see past that singular, irrelevant fact. At this point, crying racism is nothing more than the liberal Pavlovian response to freedom. They can't help it, and they don't understand what the rest of us are so upset about. They don't get that most people don't want to become wards of the state. They are completely baffled when people don't want the government to takeover every aspect of their lives, so they use "racist" as a sort of intellectual firewall. Go figure.

Back to the Cost Of Government Day report. One of the many myths the report destroys is the idea that Obama's stimulus package was actually an economic stimulus package. It wasn't. It was mostly just a bunch of big government appropriations spending under the guise of stimulus, along with spending to prop up, guess who? – the government ("never let a crisis go to waste"). Here's the breakdown of spending in the alleged stimulus package:

- $90 billion for “State Fiscal Relief;”
- $71.3 billion for the Department of Labor, Health and
Human Services and Education (including $16.6 billion for
Student Financial Assistance, $13 billion for Education for
the Disadvantaged, $12.2 billion for Special Education and
$9.7 billion for National Institutes of Health);
- $61.1 billion for Transportation, Urban Development and
Housing (including $27.5 billion for Highway
Construction);
- $57.3 billion for Assistance for Unemployed Workers and
Struggling Families (including 39.2 billion for
Unemployment Compensation);
- $53.6 billion for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund;
- $50.8 billion for Energy and Water (including $16.8 billion
for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy);
- $26.4 billion for Agriculture, Rural Development and Food
and Drug Administration (including $20 billion for the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program);
- $25.1 billion for Health Insurance Assistance;
- $20.8 billion for Health Information Technology;
- $15.8 billion on Commerce, Justice and Science (including
$4.7 billion on the Broadband Technology Opportunities
Program);
- $10.6 billion on Interior and Environment (including Clean
Water and DrinkingWater State Revolving Funds);
- $7.9 billion on Defense and Homeland Security;
- $6.7 billion on Financial Services and General Government
(including $5.4 billion on the Federal Buildings Fund);
- $4.3 billion on Military Construction and Veteran Affairs.

Another interesting item in the report is how the tax burden of the various states affects the population and prosperity of those states. The report states that between 1997 and 2007, the ten states with the highest tax burdens lost 3 million citizens and $82 billion in income. During the same period, over 2.6 million people moved to the states with no income tax, bringing in about $98.5 billion in income. Hmmm. Those no income tax states must be racist.

Maybe the most important thing to remember about President Obama's first year in office is this – in 2009, taxpayers are confronted with a federal budget that raises spending to over $9,000 for every man, woman and child in America—forever. That's $36,000 for a family of four. EVERY YEAR. And our President has only just begun to "change" America. Change into what, I shudder to think.

In conclusion, keep going to those Tea Parties and townhall meetings. Keep telling your Congressperson what you think. The only ones who can stop this tyrannical government (and it started long before Obama arrived on the scene) is we, the people. Ignore all the name-calling you endure from the leftist slaves and their pet slave media. They are the problem. You are the solution.

Baffle 'em with you-know-what.

If Washington D.C. has a credo, that must surely be it. The media isn't far behind.

But before I get into that, I'd like to take a moment to thank President Obama for saving us all from last week's swine flu pandemic (worldwide epidemic). Just think, if Bush was still the President, we'd probably all be dead now. Plus, Obama saved the country for the bargain basement price of $1.5 billion, which hasn't even been spent yet. Oh man, that Obama is GOOD.

The media was speculating today that the recession has bottomed out, because we only LOST 539,000 jobs in April. This rosy optimism came because the experts had predicted job losses of over 600,000. The media left out that the government hired 66,000 people to do the census, and the government hired many others as well (which accounts for almost the entire difference between the projections and the actual job numbers). Those government jobs are all on the taxpayer dime, of course, and add nothing to economic growth. The private sector is still hemorrhaging jobs as fast as ever, but I guess the media is looking for something positive to hand their hat on, because Obama is the president now, and that means CHANGE has come. Call me crazy, but I'll say the recession is over when we start CREATING jobs instead of losing them. The media's optimism comes in spite of the fact that GDP shrunk by 6.1% in the first quarter, and that we're $11 trillion in debt, and that we'll be running a $1.8 trillion deficit this year, and that we have massive deficits projected as far as the eye can see, and that Obama is projected to double the national debt in four years and triple it in eight years, and that unemployment is 8.9%, the highest in 25 years, and that we had a Treasury bond auction with demand so weak that we had to pay higher interest rates just to continue selling our long-term debt (which will raise Obama's deficit and debt projections even higher), and that our industrial base is vanishing, and that what's left of it is collapsing, and that we have massive unfunded entitlement liabilities looming on the horizon (growing at the rate of $2 trillion yearly), and that most of our state governments are broke, and that many banks failed the stress tests (they need $75 billion more bailout dollars, with more surely to come), and that credit still isn't flowing after $700 billion spent on TARP, and that companies all across the country are cutting back the hours of the workers they are retaining, and that if you add the folks who have fallen off the unemployment rolls to the unemployed numbers, unemployment comes out close to 15%, and that the federal government is spending dollars it doesn't have at an all-time record pace, and that the government is printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, and that the government has committed a total of $12 trillion thus far in fighting the recession, and that on top of that, Obama wants to raise energy prices through the roof and create lots more entitlements…………

I guess other than that, happy days are here again.

Oh yeah, and we're still fighting two wars, Obama has no idea what to do with the Gitmo prisoners, we're funneling money to Hamas, we're pondering whether to charge Bushco with war crimes, Pelosi's STILL lying about her knowledge of waterboarding even after the leaked CIA information proves she lied her butt off, Obama is looking for a Supreme Court Justice who is "empathetic" to certain groups as opposed to one who follows the law, the price index is rising in while we're in the depths of recession, Iran is almost certain to have nuclear weapons soon, the Pakistan government is in jeopardy (and Pakistan has nukes, which just maybe could be a problem if the Taliban gets their hands on)…

But other than that, everything's coming up roses.

Plus, Obama cut $17 billion from the budget. Golf clap for Obama. What the media left out of that story was that Obama isn't reducing the deficit by that $17 billion, oh no, he's going to use that money for OTHER government programs, so the net savings to taxpayers is ZERO. This is what passes for fiscal responsibility in the new Obama CHANGE era.

But it's all good. Thar's a new sheriff in town, and he reads that thar teleprompter REAL good.

Never mind that in order to avert fiscal armaggedon, Obama is going to have to come up with a tax increase of proportions never before contemplated in this country's history. By my reckoning, it will have to be at least $2 trillion per year to cover the deficits, interest on the debt, and the unfunded entitlements. It's either that or make drastic government spending cuts, and you know our new sheriff ain't 'bout to do that. Only them thar rightwing extremist fellas talk that kind o' crazy talk.

Welcome to the age of universal government.

I've gone on several rants on this blog previously about what a Ponzi scheme Social Security is. I now realize I've been thinking too small. It isn't just SS that is a Ponzi scheme. It's our entire federal government, and that Ponzi scheme is unraveling. The new funds required from the taxpayers can no longer keep up with the demand for funds the federal government requires. Like all Ponzi schemes, even one on as grand a scale as our government, it is destined to collapse.

But remember, put your hand over your mouth when you cough, and wash your hands frequently. Then everything should be fine.

The standard Democratic version of what caused the financial crisis is – a lack of regulation from the Bush administration, you know, all those "failed policies." That's a convenient story for the Democrats, but let's briefly review again what happened with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who together bundle and securitize 60% of the mortgage loans in the country. Remember, it was the mortgage industry meltdown that started the financial domino effect. Here's a video you've never seen on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, or any of the rest of of the "unbiased" mainstream media.

Now ask yourself why, seven months AFTER the financial meltdown, there still haven't been any regulatory changes at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The only change has been to bring the bankrupted former Government Sponsored Enterprises under full government control, thus formally making the American taxpayers fully responsible for them. Also ask yourself why, seven months AFTER the financial meltdown, has the government still not implemented any mortgage loan standards for the financial industry ? The banks are largely implementing mortgage loan standards on themselves, but the government is actually trying to get the banks to loan money as indiscriminately as before, in order to "get credit moving again." Banks are even being criticized by the government for not making loans that the banks deem too risky.

Finally, ask yourself why, seven months AFTER the financial meltdown, is Barney Frank (D-MA) STILL the head of the House Financial Services Committee ?

In related news, read about how President Obama's first 100 days come out to a cost to taxpayers of $65 billion PER DAY (and that's a conservative estimate). Of course, there's no possibility that could EVER be a problem. Heck no. Obama's cool, and with all his vast management/economic education and experience (NONE before now), what could possibly go wrong ?

And to think, liberals keep asking what all the Tea Party protests are about. They don't understand. They're baffled. Un-be-liev-able.