Europe: What Would We Do Without It?

clipped from www.qando.net But wait, there's more: Russia has also mended fences with Germany, concluding a new bilateral energy deal and winning assurances from Angela Merkel, the chancellor, that Berlin would not support granting Georgia or Ukraine Nato candidate status when the alliance meets in December. Europe - what would we do without it?

And This One

clipped from www.qando.net Obama trained ACORN activists. A 1995 Chicago Reader article on Obama stated “Obama continues his work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons.” Obama also ran Project Vote, known for widespread voter fraud, which Time magazine called “a non-partisan arm” of ACORN. In a speech to ACORN in 2007, cited by Newsmax, Obama gushed “I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois. ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it and we appreciate your work.” I'm sure he does - especially their work in the key battle-ground states for this election.

Why That One Of Course

clipped from www.qando.net And who has been an advocate for, worked with and trained members of ACORN? Why "that one" of course. Brad O'Leary puts it all in context for you: Following the DNC Convention, Saul Alinsky’s son, L. David Alinsky, wrote a letter to the Boston Globe. “Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing his effectiveness,” the son wrote. “I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It’s a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.” The great community organizing Obama did was through the radical Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACORN is notoriously known for its radical, and often illegal, practices and adherence to the radical philosophy of Saul Alinsky.

1000 Sundays

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Not The Same Thing

clipped from townhall.com Second, wisdom and blue-chip college educations are not quite the same thing. The fools in Washington and New York who blew up Wall Street had degrees from our finest professional schools. The most chilling example, at the very beginning of this ongoing mess, came in 2003 during the House Financial Services Committee's hearing on Fannie and Freddie. At one point, Harvard Law School graduate Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., asked Fannie Mae CEO and fellow Harvard Law School graduate Franklin Rains -- who took millions in bonuses even as he helped bankrupt the once-hallowed institution -- whether he felt the mortgage giant had been "under-regulated." Raines answered him under oath, "No, sir." Then overseer Frank announced, "OK. Then I am not entirely sure why we are here."

ACORN, The New Party And The O

clipped from www.humanevents.com In 1995, the New Ground, the newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, noted, “In Chicago, the New Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN. “Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. Naturally, Barack Obama was an active part of ACORN at the time, helping it legally in court and helping it organize voters.  By 1996, ACORN and the New Party were essentially the same body.  Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the New Party endorsed Barack Obama in his State Senate bid.

What's Going To Give?

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com This may be a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The political, cultural and social establishments are determined to elect the pro-status quo, anti-change candidate, Barack Obama, as President. The power and money arrayed behind Obama seem unbeatable. At the same time, it is inconceivable that the American people would elect a socialist President. So, if this report is correct, something's got to give. In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. ...

Where The Jews Are Republican

clipped from www.weeklystandard.com "We respect war heroes in Israel, especially those like McCain who were POWs," notes Mitchell Barak, managing director of the Jerusalem-based Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications. "We see Obama fantasizing about how he wants to sit down and talk to the terrorists, and he loses a lot of Israelis right there. He comes off as unrealistic and insensitive to the existential challenges facing the Jewish state, and as naïve." Naïve, indeed. It's a theme that popped up frequently when I mentioned Obama's name. Obama lacks experience. Obama doesn't understand how to deal with terrorists in general, and radical Islamic terrorists in particular. Most Israelis, who live daily with the threat of terrorism, simply don't trust Obama. Take the residents of Sderot, a smallish Israeli city perched half a mile from the Gaza Strip. Since 2001, 7,000-8,000 rockets have rained down on Sderot from Gaza. Fifteen Israelis have died in these attacks and more than 600 have been wounded.

Not Confused By The Facts

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com Barack Obama's being the first serious black candidate for President of the United States is what most people consider remarkable but how he got there is at least equally surprising. The story of Obama's political career is not a pretty story. He won his first political victory by being the only candidate on the ballot-- after hiring someone skilled at disqualifying the signers of opposing candidates' petitions, on whatever technicality he could come up with. Despite his words today about "change" and "cleaning up the mess in Washington," Obama was not on the side of reformers who were trying to change the status quo of corrupt, machine politics in Chicago and clean up the mess there. Obama came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates. Senator Obama is running on an image that is directly the opposite of what he has been doing for two decades. His escapes from his past have been as remarkable as the great escapes of Houdini.

Blowing Up The Dam

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Here is how John Cochrane, Myron S. Scholes Professor of Finance in the University of Chicago, characterized the bailout, in an interview with Fox News: "The legislation is like this: some boats are sinking, so rather than bailing those boats out, you blow up the dam and drain the whole lake." That comment, and many like it, was offered even before "sweeteners" were added, that would in themselves roll any economist's eyeballs. It is worth adding that not one of the politicians voting on the 450-odd-page bill can possibly have read the whole thing, let alone deeply considered the implications of its parts. Few of them have an understanding of the crisis they are legislating for. The blind are leading the blind.

A New Meaning For "Financial Armageddon"

clipped from www.qando.net Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves are so low that the country can only afford one month of imports and faces possible bankruptcy. Officially, the central bank holds $8.14 billion (£4.65 billion) of foreign currency, but if forward liabilities are included, the real reserves may be only $3 billion - enough to buy about 30 days of imports like oil and food. Nine months ago, Pakistan had $16 bn in the coffers. The government is engulfed by crises left behind by Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who resigned the presidency in August. High oil prices have combined with endemic corruption and mismanagement to inflict huge damage on the economy. The price-tag to rescue them? About 100 billion. As mentioned, Pakistan is a critical ally in the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is also has nuclear weapons and a rather large population of radical Islamists who would love nothing better than to get their hands on them.

Got It

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com McCain: Of course we would come to their aid without waiting for the UN. Obama: We would use "all our tools" and "sanctions" and "cost-benefit analysis." So let me get this straight: Obama wants to preemptively attack a country without provocation in Pakistan, but refuses to commit to use military force to defend an ally after THEY have been invaded.    Got it.

The Short Summary

clipped from www.pajamasmedia.com BROKAW KEEPS TELLING THEM TO STICK TO THE TIME BUDGET: If they can't stick to the time budget, why believe 'em on the federal budget? . . .

An Extra Helping Of Depression

clipped from headingright.com The full economists’ statement on Barack Obama’s economic proposals and a complete list of economists who support it follows: Barack Obama argues that his proposals to raise tax rates and halt international trade agreements would benefit the American economy. They would do nothing of the sort. Economic analysis and historical experience show that they would do the opposite. They would reduce economic growth and decrease the number of jobs in America. Moreover, with the credit crunch, the housing slump, and high energy prices weakening the U.S. economy, his proposals run a high risk of throwing the economy into a deep recession. It was exactly such misguided tax hikes and protectionism, enacted when the U.S. economy was weak in the early 1930s, that greatly increased the severity of the Great Depression.

Eh Tu Europe?

clipped from www.pajamasmedia.com As European stock markets tank, the Irish government guarantees bank deposits, the Benelux countries nationalize Fortis bank, Germany bails out Hypo Real Estate Holdings, and Denmark also guarantees bank deposits and dismally so forth, the question arises: Who knew that Europe, of all places, was so under-regulated? Or maybe de-regulation is not the chief cause for the outbreak of financial chaos? Just wondering. When the answer to "what to do?" is always "regulate more," the answer to "what went wrong?" must always be "not enough regulation." Megan McArdle has related thoughts: "Europe's ongoing disaster is starting to match ours. This not only seriously challenges the idea that the main problem is American bank regulation--everyone is having the same problem, despite different regulatory regimes--but also puts us in much deeper jeopardy." Yes, just over a week ago, Europeans were gloating at American problems.

Fugitive Dreams

clipped from www.cashill.com “I picture the street coming alive, awakening from the fury of winter, stirred from the chilly spring night by cold glimmers of sunlight angling through the city.” Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days.   “Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds.” Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father. Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write Dreams From My Father, he had written very close to nothing. As an undergraduate, Obama had written what he justifiably calls some “very bad poetry.” He published nothing under his own name in The Harvard Law Review, where he served as an editor and as president. And after leaving Harvard, he published nothing in its review or in any law journal. Then, in 1995, this untested 33 year-old produced what Time Magazine has called--with a straight face-- “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”

Epic Leadership Fail (Part 26,825)

clipped from www.pajamasmedia.com BRENDAN LOY ON TONIGHT'S DEBATE: "This is presidential politics in America -- fundamentally unserious, at a time of grave peril for the nation." And it's hard to argue with this: "It isn't just that McCain and Obama are flawed candidates; it's that there aren't really any better alternatives. Who would you rather see up there? Hillary Clinton? Mitt Romney? John Edwards? Mike Huckabee? Joe Biden? Sarah Palin? Nancy Pelosi? John Boehner? Harry Reid? Mitch McConnell? George W. Bush? John Kerry? Dick Cheney? Al Gore? Please. Our political class is totally failing us, almost as much as we're failing ourselves." Yes, the political class isn't attracting the best talent in the nation. It's not even attracting the second-best.

I think the Sarah Palin nomination just showed us why we're not getting talent. As I've said for a long time: If you're smart enough to be president, you're smart enough not to want to be president.

For instance, why would you want to have your family and reputation assassinated by ruthless idiots as we have watched with Sarah. You could be Jesus Christ himself and the same would happen. ESPECIALLY if you were Jesus Christ in fact.

But even worse, there is now a complete "impedance mismatch" between the economy and the government. Due to the complexity generated by (even just what there is left of) the free market, the government can't understand all the unintended consequences that it has on the market even if it had the best of intentions -- which of course it doesn't.

So Much For Europe

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com It's always seemed that in a time of crisis, national loyalties would likely reassert themselves. Today, that happened, as Europe's biggest economies were unable to organize a coordinated response to the world-wide credit crisis. It was Europe's biggest and most powerful country, Germany, that served notice on the others that "union" goes only so far: Germany's Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck made clear his government's opposition to the idea that the euro zone's single largest economy should put up money to prop up institutions outside his country. He said Monday that he and Chancellor Angela Merkel were considering creating a "shield" that would protect the country's entire financial sector, and that a Europe-wide shield or bailout was out of the question. "The chancellor and I reject a European shield because we as Germans do not want to pay into a big pot where we do not have control and do not know where German money might be used," he said in a separate interview with WDR 2

Epic Fraud

clipped from www.commentarymagazine.com Obama’s obfuscation regarding Ayers is, in a sense, the homage that vice pays to virtue - a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that the political culture of Chicago, and especially of Hyde Park, is more accommodating than perhaps it should be to a morally dubious figure like Ayers, and that having accommodated himself to those accommodations Obama now recognizes the need to behave as if he didn’t. But this is true of Obama’s entire circle of comrades and associates, of course. He didn’t know who they were, or wasn’t all that close to them, or never happened to be there when their life-long habit of excoriating evil America was demonstrated. It is all of a piece. But more than hypocrisy is at work here. It is not just far Left, American-hating radicals he now disowns. You get the sense that he believes everyone can be played. There is no end to it — everyone gets the version of Obama that perfectly fits his own world view. It is not hypocrisy. It’s fraud.

And it ends:

But one thing has been consistent. He has never, ever attacked political corruption, whether in Chicago or Washington. To the contrary, at the Woods Fund, the Annenberg Challenge and the U.S. Senate he’s laddled out earmarks and goodies to a long list of friends and associates — Wright, Pfleger, Will County ( home of FBI target Larry Walsh), Allison S. Davis, ACORN, etc. The one consistency has been his fidelity to political supporters. Everyone else and every political position were disposable.

Now is precisely the time for firm convictions, strict ethical propriety and the firmness to turn away those who put private interests above the public good. We may be on the verge of electing a candidate who lacks any of these traits.

Down The Memory Hole

clipped from wthrockmorton.com Imagine Jim Dobson or Rick Warren endorsing Barack Obama. Imagine the headlines and news stories which would derive from such an endorsement. Now imagine a major Democratic operative, who is heads one of the largest chapters of the National Organization for Women endorsing John McCain and Sarah Palin, primarily due to Sarah Palin’s place on the ticket. Both would be big news, right?

A Town Hall Question

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com The global financial markets are in crisis, we're fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea is resuming nuclear weapons programs, Russia is becoming more aggressive, and Iran wants to destroy Israel and is on the verge of having nukes. What experiences have you had in your life that have prepared you for dealing with the crises you'll face as president?

"Extremists"

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com My career was not launched with the assistance of an unrepentant terrorist. My pastor has never said "God damn America." I don't think our troops are "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians." My spouse doesn't think America is a "downright mean country." I've never sat on a board with an unrepentant terrorist. I've never directed millions of dollars to radical organizations. I've never opposed requiring medical care for babies who are born alive. I bought my home without assistance from a convicted felon. I've never taken my kids to a church whose pastor thinks AIDS was created by the government. If Obama's mainstream, most Americans are extremists.

Comment Of The Day: WMD II

clipped from meganmcardle.theatlantic.com "The facts that Warren Buffet called exotic derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction" and state regulators were trying urgently to get reckless mortgage lending under control were just random noise in the system. Uh, huh." Before we put another halo on Warren Buffett, it's worth remembering that he was and remains the largest shareholder of Moody's (via Berkshire Hathaway), and Moody's was slapping triple-A ratings on plenty of exotic derivative securities, including CDOs full of sketchy mortgage-backed securities. As long as Moody's was using its oligopolistic position to rake in high profits, Buffett doesn't seem to have cared much about how it was earning them.

Convenient Resignations

clipped from www.classicalvalues.com the Obamas paid a lot of money for law degrees and yet they no longer have licenses. That is kind of strange. Let us start with Barack and see if we can trace the demise of his law career. Obama relinquished his Illinois law license in early 2007. Why would Obama give up something that provided his primary source of income and something he spent so much time and energy obtaining? Andy Martin filed a complaint in IL on March 13, 2007 stating that Obama had lied on his IL bar application. Obama had 17 outstanding traffic violations that he had failed to take care of. Mr. Martin discovered that Obama would not be prosecuted because he no longer had his law license. I contacted Andy Martin and this was his response: "Nothing. Obama had already resigned as a lawyer and so they had no jurisdiction over him." "Not if they have lost jurisdiction over the individual. They can't punish someone who has resigned, which is why so many corrupt lawyers in Illinois resign before they are disbarred."

Disparate Impact

clipped from www.classicalvalues.com Want to understand what happened? Ace has a very terse and cogent explanation: If the federal government were guaranteeing a trillion new dollars for no-money down car purchases with no credit checks or proof of employment or income, what do you think would happen to the price of cars? They'd triple. For a while. As to what caused the push for no-money down home sales with no credit checks or proof of employment or income, it's easy. I've lost track of the number of posts I've written about it. Ace singles out Barney Frank for especially harsh treatment, and while Frank is an insufferable fool, he's as replaceable as a piston ring. (As are "Chris Dodd, ACORN, Franklin Raines, Penny Pritzker, Jim Johnson, and of course Barack Hussein Obama.") The problem is the relentless push for socialism (a word few will use), which has done enormous damage to the economy by the simple misuse of a two word phrase: "Disparate impact."

CAC: How Acorn Fit

clipped from online.wsj.com CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn). Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.

CAC: Ayers And "Small c" Communism

clipped from online.wsj.com The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto. In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC: How Obama Got There

clipped from online.wsj.com One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

Dig It

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The REAL ugly Americans...

OChicago

clipped from proteinwisdom.com Chicago’s political elite love to give speeches about the importance of public education, but not for their children. Mayor Daley sent his children to private schools. Deborah Lynch, the former head of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, sent her kids to private schools. America’s newest political superstar, Barack Obama, sends his kids to private schools. With the exodus of the rich from Chicago’s public schools, 69 percent of the children in the Chicago Public School system are poor. Chicago’s political system is inefficient and costly. There are no term limits in Chicago. The Democratic Party has controlled the Mayor’s office since 1931(a big city record). There’s no opposition: Democrat’s control 49 out of 50 seats on the city council. Corruption is everywhere. Barely a month can go by without a major scandal. The FBI has the largest public corruption squad in the United States located in Chicago . Chicago voters don’t seem to care.

What's Under The Bus

clipped from hotair.com Even more ridiculously, Power’s ultimate aim is to send a massive American or Western force into Israel to stop what Power apparently sees as an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.  She specifically states that the force has to be “massive”, not like a Srebrenica- or Bosnia-sized force.  Why would it need to be so large?  In order to neutralize the Israeli Defense Force, and protect the forces of Fatah and Hamas. Had Barack Obama kicked her off of his advisory panel (rumored to number 300) after making remarks like this, it could have assuaged fears about his intentions towards Israel.  Instead, he invited Power to advise him after making these remarks.  She resigned only after calling Hillary a monster and after insinuating that Obama may not retreat from Iraq in 16 months if the ground situation changed — which Obama later adopted as his own position after the primaries.

Just A Gaffe

clipped from www.mudvillegazette.com Senator Joseph Biden, who visited Iraq frequently, then took the podium to issue a blunt warning. "The American people can't want peace more than the Iraqi people", he said. "It's encouraging to see central government assisting you in Anbar. In America we are waiting to see how extensive that cooperation will be. If it is [extensive], you can count on America to stay. If it is not, you can say goodbye now." After the meeting, the sheiks mingled, nibbling on chicken and pita bread. Several were puzzled by Biden's lecture. They had expected to be congratulated for having thrown out al Qaeda. When I chatted with [Iraq's] Deputy Prime Minister Salh, he was annoyed. "It took your country thirteen years," he said, "to get a constitution and a set of laws. Why are you talking defeatist?" Probably just a "gaffe", I'm sure.

And Don't Forget Iran Either

clipped from www.qando.net Al Qaeda’s politics are a product of the Arab world, specifically of the radical and totalitarian Wahhabi sect of Islam founded in the 18th Century in Saudi Arabia by the fanatical Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab. He thought the medieval interpretations of Islam even on the backward Arabian peninsula were too liberal and lenient. His most extreme followers cannot even peacefully coexist with mainstream Sunni Muslims, let alone Shia Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, secularists, feminists, gays, or anyone else. Their global jihad is a war against the entire human race in all its diversity and plurality. Read the whole article - it is excellent. Totten also makes the case that Iraq was hardly a distraction. One of the reasons it is important to remind everyone of this fairly basic but mostly overlooked point is that one of the reason we're finding it tough sledding to overcome this threat is we're ignoring it's source - Saudi Arabia.

Bozos At The Helm

clipped from pajamasmedia.com From where I sit, the United States government has embarked on two pieces of social engineering in the last few years. One was to make oil expensive as expensive as possible to drive people to greater use of alternative energy sources - because anything less would be irresponsible and destructive to the environment. The other was to enshrine home ownership (i.e., easy-to-obtain mortgages) as a new American right - because anything less would be unequal and racist. Then, once they became crises, both were blamed on ‘greedy capitalism’, instead of what they really were: legislative interference into market forces. At least in the business world, especially in the take-no-prisoners world of high-tech that kind of venality and ineptitude either gets you fired or kills the company; by comparison, in Washington, it puts you in charge of the recovery effort.

He's right about the problem and how we got here.

Unfortunately -- and speaking as a high-tech nerd myself -- I'm not quite so sanguine about the ability of technology to get us out of it since it's very much a double edge sword. The barrier to entry for WMD is rapidly turning into a pumpkin for instance.

Welcome to the Tinfoil Apocalypse. With Bozos at the helm.

Telling

clipped from www.qando.net So Paulson's billions divert credit from working capital to long-term mortgages - from where it's most needed to where it's most wasted. Even if the giveaway adequately props up the banks, which I doubt, they still can't make working capital loans, because the raw material they used (commercial MM deposits) will be desperately short. I think it's very telling that in two days of hearings and two weeks of discussion we have yet to see *any* detailed mechanism for how Paulson's plan will increase the supply of, say, inventory loans. It's not that every economist in the world is an idiot, it's just not going to help. I think people have fallen into the fallacy that if it costs a lot it must be valuable. Paulson's plan falls into the category of very expensive way to hurt ourselves.

Lunacy Sandwich

clipped from www.qando.net ``If they pass this thing, it's awful what the consequences are going to be in terms of an ongoing federal relationship that doesn't need to exist with the institutions,'' O'Neill said. ``Are we going to insist on having a federal representative on boards of directors to protect our investment?'' The main component of the legislation now under consideration is giving the Treasury secretary authority to purchase distressed mortgage-related assets with an amount of money equivalent to about half of Canada's annual gross domestic product. ``We have no capacity in the federal government and it's not possible to create a capacity to manage a $700 billion property portfolio,'' said O'Neill, who was chairman of Alcoa Inc., the largest U.S. aluminum producer, from 1987 to 2000. ``It's crazy. It's like we've lost our moorings.''

They Mean It

clipped from www.latimes.com We Americans are accustomed to regarding political rhetoric much as Dr. Johnson did epitaphs. "They are not," he wrote, "given under oath." In other words, we don't expect public men or women to speak the truth from public platforms. When it comes to our own parochial affairs, there's probably a bit of weary realism in that. However, this casual expectation of rhetorical hypocrisy has inhibited from the start our ability to recognize and deal with the threat posed by Islamist radicalism. Time and again, the spokesmen for these movements have told the world precisely what they intend. Time and again, the scant handful of Americans who bothered to take notice have dismissed what was said as the product of political alienation, as the consequence of economic marginalization, as a hangover of post-colonial insecurity or as tactical bluster. No. These people mean exactly what they say, and they mean it for precisely the reasons they say they do.

Missing The Point

clipped from www.realclearmarkets.com Many defenders of the government’s efforts to prompt banks to lend more to minorities have claimed that this effort had little to do with the present mortgage mess. Specifically they point out that many institutions that made subprime mortgages during the market bubble weren’t even banks subject to the Community Reinvestment Act, the main vehicle that the feds used to cajole banks to loosen their lending. But this defense misses the point. In order to push banks to lend more to minority borrowers, advocates like the Boston Fed put forward an entire new set of lending standards and explained to the industry just why loans based on these slacker standards were somehow safer than the industry previously thought. These justifications became the basis for a whole new set of values (or lack of values), as no-down payment loans and loans to people with poor credit history or to those who were already loaded up with debt became more common throughout the entire industry.

Not Pretty

clipped from ac360.blogs.cnn.com In the fall of 2005, some 65% said we have a leadership crisis in the country. By 2006, the number had risen to 69%. And last fall, no less than 77% declared there was a crisis of leadership. Moreover, 79% said the United States would decline unless we get better leaders. Please note that this survey did not reflect just an unhappiness with President George W. Bush. It was widespread across 12 different institutions and leadership groupings. Only the military and the medical profession were given relatively high marks this past fall. Strikingly for purposes of understanding these past few days, the institutions and groups with the lowest levels of confidence were smack in the middle of this financial meltdown. Four of the five lowest rated groups in the index were business, Congress, the executive branch, and the press. No wonder the “leaders” of these institutions had so much trouble persuading the general public about the seriousness of our financial mess.

The Fish

clipped from econlog.econlib.org Here's a little poker rule to remember - if you can't identify the fish at the table, you are probably the fish. Does government know it's the fish at the table? If it is, then it's willing to be the fish. It has nothing to lose since it's playing with other people's money and has no accountability to the people whose money its playing with. In fact, it'll probably take the biggest cut of the winnings (should there be any - which I doubt) for itself.