Welcome to Jimmy Carter's 2nd term

Cover of Jimmy CarterThe press is finally coming around to my previous conclusion: Osama is the most dangerous ideologue since Woodrow Wilson, the most unethical crook since Bill Clinton, and, worst of all, the most dangerous incompetent since Jimmy Carter...T

It has taken three decades, but Americans are finally living through Jimmy Carter’s second term.

Now we’ve got Jimmy Jr. barking at us from the White House about eating our peas and ripping off our Band-Aid. He might not even let us have our Social Security checks.

These are just the latest in a long line of nagging lectures. Already, we have been taught how we should sneeze into the crook of our arm. We need to drive less. And we need to caulk up those drafty houses of ours.

What ever happened to the soaring rhetoric and big bold ideas President Obama promised us in that historic election of his?

Is this what he meant by a new kind of politics? If so, no thanks. Oh, and it is not new. Jimmy already dragged us through all this once and we just barely survived it.

One of the most unpleasant things about Mr. Carter was the condescending disdain he could barely disguise for struggling Americans and their irritating malaise.

Increasingly, Jimmy Jr. is having difficulty concealing that very same disdain for us as the political winds around him turn hostile and all of his bright ideas lie fallow as nothing more than socialist hocus-pocus.

But even Mr. Carter never laid bare so baldly and plainly as Mr. Obama did earlier this week his deep-seated contempt for this whole annoying process we call “democracy.”

The problem with reaching a deal to raise the debt ceiling, he explained in a long sermon, is that there is this huge wave of Republicans who won control of the House in the last election by promising not to raise any more taxes and to cut the absurd overspending that has driven this town for decades.

He bemoaned - in public - that these Republicans are more concerned about the “next election” rather than doing “what’s right for the country.” In other words, he is saying the honorable thing would be for these Republicans to ignore the expressed wishes of voters, break their campaign promises and raise taxes. Wow.

As if the whole problem of Washington spending us into oblivion is the fault of stingy taxpayers and stupid voters. And what we really need is Jimmy Jr., who knows what is best for us despite what we may think.

Continuing his lecture, Mr. Obama then complained about America’s “political process, where folks are rewarded for saying irresponsible things to win elections.”

How did this man get past sixth-grade social studies, much less Iowa?

When Mr. Obama finished his sermon about the contemptible Republicans keeping faith with their voters like a bunch of chumps, he then turned to his own intentions - and revealed even more of his contempt for us.

All this talk about “raising revenue” - the deceitful line he uses to describe raising taxes - has been most unhelpful, he said. “I want to be crystal clear,” he said. “Nobody has talked about increasing taxes now. Nobody has talked about increasing taxes next year.”

So when would these tax hikes that he is demanding take effect?

In 2013, well after Mr. Obama must face voters for re-election.

Lucky for us, it appears more and more unlikely every day that we will have to suffer through a third term of Jimmy Carter‘s.
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The Obama Spell Is Broken

So rewarding, just as it is so frustrating for all of us who saw this coming long down the pike. A progressive is a progressive is a progressive. They always want a collectivist society, as they always have. Jimmy Carter, at the height of progressivism in America was found out, and discredited. Bill Clinton ran as a conservative, lied, was discovered, and discredited.

The populace has a disturbingly short memory, it seems, after the successive disasters of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ and Jimmy Carter.

Perhaps this time the lesson will sink in: There are only marginal differences between progressivism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, and communism. These differences mainly depend on the history of the respected peoples subjected to them.

Let us hope and pray that the Americans people's proud traditions of liberty and rule of law once again prevail, and this dark stench of tyranny is banished from our shores once and for all time...T

The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon.

The nation's faith in institutions and time-honored ways had cracked. In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.

There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune.

He was a blank slate, and devotees projected onto him what they wanted or wished. In the manner of political redeemers who have marked—and wrecked—the politics of the Arab world and Latin America, Mr. Obama left the crowd to its most precious and volatile asset—its imagination. There was no internal coherence to the coalition that swept him to power. There was cultural "cool" and racial absolution for the white professional classes who were the first to embrace him. There was understandable racial pride on the part of the African-American community that came around to his banners after it ditched the Clinton dynasty.

The white working class had been slow to be convinced. The technocracy and elitism of Mr. Obama's campaign—indeed of his whole persona—troubled that big constituency, much more, I believe, than did his race and name. The promise of economic help, of an interventionist state that would salvage ailing industries and provide a safety net for the working poor, reconciled these voters to a candidate they viewed with a healthy measure of suspicion. He had been caught denigrating them as people "clinging to their guns and religion," but they had forgiven him.

Mr. Obama himself authored the tale of his own political crisis. He had won an election, but he took it as a plebiscite granting him a writ to remake the basic political compact of this republic.

Mr. Obama's self-regard, and his reading of his mandate, overwhelmed all restraint. The age-old American balance between a relatively small government and a larger role for the agencies of civil society was suddenly turned on its head. Speed was of the essence to the Obama team and its allies, the powerful barons in Congress. Better ram down sweeping social programs—a big liberal agenda before the people stirred to life again.

Progressives pressed for a draconian attack on the workings of our health care, and on the broader balance between the state and the marketplace. The economic stimulus, ObamaCare, the large deficits, the bailout package for the automobile industry—these, and so much more, were nothing short of a fundamental assault on the givens of the American social compact.

And then there was the hubris of the man at the helm: He was everywhere, and pronounced on matters large and small. This was political death by the teleprompter.

Americans don't deify their leaders or hang on their utterances, but Mr. Obama succumbed to what the devotees said of him: He was the Awaited One. A measure of reticence could have served him. But the flight had been heady, and in the manner of Icarus, Mr. Obama flew too close to the sun.

We have had stylish presidents, none more so than JFK. But Kennedy was an ironist and never fell for his own mystique. Mr. Obama's self-regard comes without irony—he himself now owns up to the "remoteness and detachment" of his governing style. We don't have in this republic the technocratic model of the European states, where a bureaucratic elite disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will. Mr. Obama was smitten with his own specialness.

In this extraordinary tale of hubris undone, the Europeans—more even than the people in Islamic lands—can be assigned no small share of blame. They overdid the enthusiasm for the star who had risen in America.

It was the way in Paris and Berlin (not to forget Oslo of course) of rebuking all that played out in America since 9/11—the vigilance, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the sense that America's interests and ways were threatened by a vengeful Islamism. But while the Europeans and Muslim crowds hailed him, they damned his country all the same. For his part, Mr. Obama played along, and in Ankara, Cairo, Paris and Berlin he offered penance aplenty for American ways.

But no sooner had the country recovered its poise, it drew a line for Mr. Obama. The "bluest" of states, Massachusetts, sent to Washington a senator who had behind him three decades of service in the National Guard, who proclaimed his pride in his "army values" and was unapologetic in his assertion that it was more urgent to hunt down terrorists than to provide for their legal defense.

Then the close call on Christmas Day at the hands of the Nigerian jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab demonstrated that the terrorist threat had not receded. The president did his best to recover: We are at war, he suddenly proclaimed. Nor were we in need of penance abroad. Rumors of our decline had been exaggerated. The generosity of the American response to Haiti, when compared to what India and China had provided, was a stark reminder that this remains an exceptional nation that needs no apologies in distant lands.


A historical hallmark of "isms" and charismatic movements is to dig deeper when they falter—to insist that the "thing" itself, whether it be Peronism, or socialism, etc., had not been tried but that the leader had been undone by forces that hemmed him in.

It is true to this history that countless voices on the left now want Obama to be Obama. The economic stimulus, the true believers say, had not gone astray, it only needed to be larger; the popular revolt against ObamaCare would subside if and when a new system was put in place.

There had been that magical moment—the campaign of 2008—and the true believers want to return to it. But reality is merciless. The spell is broken.

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For the Record - Who Caused the Economic Meltdown?

Answer = The democrats, entirely. Who tried to fix it before the disaster hit? G. W. Bush - that's who.

The video record above shows, in their own words, that George Bush tried to warn Congress, beginning in 2002 and then ongoing until denouement, that this economic crisis was coming, if something was not done.

But congress refused to listen, siding instead with Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, and Chris Dodd, the latter two leading successful filibusters against reform of Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac, the first leading a public campaign accusing reform minded republicans of "discrimination" and "racism" against low income Americans - when not busy running a male prostitution ring out of his basement...

This video merely states the public record.

No absolution for the Clinton administration either, which promoted and supported these lax lending policies with threats to withhold funding if they they were not implemented, as Freddie and Fannie are federal creations that must conform to their federally appointed boards - Clinton appointees all. Hello, Franklin Raines?!

A warm "F You!" to leftist radical organisations such as Acorn, which lead protests in the streets against these institutions they deemed "not liberal enough" in their lending policies - try standing up to Jesse Jackson when he blackmails your company with the public threat of "racism!"

Community organizers - God help us if one of these fanatic leftist communists ever gets hold of executive power in the United States of America because, well...oh never mind...

A final "stick it where the sun don't shine" to the MSM drive-by press, which knows all of this, and continues to sweep it under the rug in the name of socialism, to the extent that they had Time Warner threaten a lawsuit (proprietary rights) if it was not taken off. This link is of the same video but is routed through Canada.

For the record, everyone...T special thanks to shallow kitty for the link!

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Bush Was Right, Again

Against all odds this author thought possible, this ignorant paean of a president is even MORE narcissistic that Bill Clinton. He is, as the author wryly, but aptly, puts it - "a man who would run over his grandmother to get in front of a camera". His press conference today was an orgy of "I" "Me" and "Mine" that would have made Ol' Bubba cringe.

Bush has left him a powerful legacy to squander. Let's hope his vanity prevails over his colossal ignorance and fanaticism, as it did the Clinton's...T

You’d never know it from listening to the lamestream media this weekend, but Iraqis went to the polls in nationwide provincial elections. Turnout was strong, and there was not a single major act of violence.

The early returns show a repudiation of the Islamist and other religious parties which had been in large part dominated by Iran. Secular parties, and in particular, the party of the current Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, appear to have gained position. This is a huge step toward a secular, stable representative democracy in Iraq.

“I just voted and I’m very happy,” said one Iraqi man.

“I want the political leaders to listen to us. I think this will begin the change,” said another.
“A great day,” said yet another.

The BBC reported that there was “a holiday atmosphere” among voters walking to the polling places.
A female Baghdad medical student said, “People here are so excited by the feeling that their vote can make a difference.”

Exhilaration over voting? Excitement? A holiday atmosphere?

The lamestream media, invested for years in the narrative that Iraq was a failure, only begrudgingly reported any of this, and made sure to counter it with erroneous reports about light turnout and confusing voting procedures.

Seriously?

Iraq had more effective and efficient candidate selection than we did.

Exhibit A: the Illinois Senate seat.

Exhibit B: the New York Senate seat.

Exhibit C: the Minnesota Senate seat (pending).

Exhibit D: ACORN, anyone?

We should have Iraqi election monitors watching us during our next elections. They ran a better show than we did.

Most disgracefully, our new president—-a man who would run over his grandmother to get in front of a camera—-could only manage a lame written statement “congratulating” the Iraqi people on holding elections. He’s got no problem holding press conferences about such pressing issues as the choice of White House puppy. But a presser on the landmark Iraq elections? Why, that’s a bridge too far.

President Bush stuck with Iraq. Against all political pressure and advice to the contrary, he went ahead with the surge and allowed the generals and the troops the latitude to see the engagement to victory. In the process, he liberated 28 million people from tyranny’s grip and gave them a shot at freedom.

Something tells me there was a “holiday atmosphere” at the former president’s Texas home this weekend.

Bush was right. Again.
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Bush Through the Obama Prism

Posted with minimal content, from VDH. As I have been saying, Bush will be fondly remembered, to say the least, in terms of actual accomplishments. Witness the "New" Obama, becoming more conservative and "Bush-like" as each day passes...T

I think Obama may do more for George Bush's reputation than anyone thinks.

I've collated the dozens of articles from liberal thinkers that explain why so far Obama — the candidate of hope and change, and cleaning out the entrenched status quo that so warps our D.C. politics and ensures stasis in our policies — has surrounded himself either with Clintonites, outright Bush people or those who worked closely with them, and centrists of ambiguous politics. The explanations are quite creative and run the gamut:

1) Whom else might a Democrat pick, given that the Carterites are now 28 years out of office, and team Clinton the only experienced circle of liberals still around (and given that Democrats have only been in the executive branch for 8 out of the last 28 years)?

2) This is part of Obama's brilliant grand strategy. Just wait and see how Machiavellian it works out: by coopting power-hungry centrist pros to enact HIS "progressive" policies, he can advance a leftist agenda much more effectively and fend off gratuitous attacks from the right-wing attack machine.

3) Review what Obama actually promised and you will learn he actually ran a centrist campaign; the problem is that too many liberals simply projected their own agendas on him, and saw what they wished rather than what was there.

4) These are not centrists at all. Gates was at heart a sort of anti-Bush maverick. Hillary and others are liberals that used to be the bane of right-wingers. The new economic team wants to assume government control of essential industries.

5) This is just a small sampling of appointments; wait until you see the U.N. rep, NEA, NEH, key figures at State and Justice. By picking bumper-sticker centrists at the figuratively top spots, he can appoint real progressives under the radar at the bread and butter posts where real policies happen.

Note that the most obvious and embarrassing explanation is taboo and blasphemous: That Obama is a masterful politician who never has had any real ideology or persona other than his own diversity story and history, youth, and charisma that together allow him to be whatever is politically expedient at the time.

That is, there is a pattern here: public campaign financing, FISA, NAFTA, drilling, nuclear power, coal, guns, capital punishment, abortion, Iran, Iraq, the surge, etc. all were repackaged as the primary and general elections evolved. A community organizing past that once welcomed in a Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Khalidi, became inoperative lest he meet a McGovern-like fate.

And rather than assess carefully the Bush policies, it made better sense to lump them altogether under the general rubric that Bush shredded the Constitution and, as a unilateral preemptivist, ruined the American brand over seas (while knowing privately that when Obama himself assumed office he would leave alone the homeland-security measures, Patriot Act, FISA, etc. to ensure the continuance of the 7-year hiatus from a major attack, and follow Bush/Petraeus in getting out of Iraq to preserve the unexpected victory).

Likewise, privately Obama knew the meltdown was not Bush's fault per se but a bipartisan miasma a decade in the making, fueled by Wall Street greed, wrongheaded utopian politics, and corruption at Freddie and Fannie — and thus the Bush response was largely to be followed (and this apparently may even extend to not tampering immediately with the existing tax rates.)

The result of all this?

I think we are slowly (and things of course could change) beginning in retrospect to look back at the outline of one of most profound bait-and-switch campaigns in our political history, predicated on the mass appeal of a magnetic leader rather than any principles per se. He out-Clintoned Hillary and followed Bill's 1992 formula: a young Democrat runs on youth, popular appeal and charisma, claims the incumbent Bush caused another Great Depression and blew Iraq, and then went right down the middle with a showy leftist veneer.

Second, we will come, through the Obama prism, to see that Bush's sins were largely the absence of rhetorical skills, unfortunate shoot 'em braggadocio in 2003-4, the federal response to Katrina, and a certain administration haughtiness about the problems in Iraq between 2002-6, but not most of his policies that included prescription drugs, No Child Left Behind, AIDs relief in Africa, the removal of two odious regimes, and consensual governments in their places, a framework at home to stop 9/11-type terrorism, and good working partnerships with key allies abroad such as Britain, Germany, France, Italy, India, et al., and a pragmatism in handling rivals like Russia and China.

In short, given all that, Obama's victory (predicated on painting Bush as a Hoover/Nixon redux), more so even than perhaps a John McCain's, may do more for Bush's reputation that anyone ever imagined. And the Mumbai mess (over there, not here) will only emphasize all this, as an array of old 9/11-era experts who used to warn us about radical Islam, then, in the subsequent respite at home, screamed that Bush fabricated a war against terror against bogeymen, and now in their third manifestation are paraded once more out to warn us about? — why, yes, radical Islam!
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Democrats Were Wrong on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

To say the least. Democrooks are not just partially responsible, they are totally responsible. There isn't "plenty of blame to go around" as the media claims. There is specific blame to pinpoint: The Clinton administration and the democrats in Congress, who insisted in imposing this Socialist jury rigged scheme down our throats. That everyone doesn't know this by now says ALL one needs to know about our utterly corrupt media. It's really no different than Pravda & Izvestia anymore...T


Seventeen. That's how many times, according to this White House statement (hat tip Gateway Pundit), that the Bush administration has called for tighter regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress has cooperated only once. In spring 2007, as House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank likes to point out, the House did pass a bill in response. The Senate did not act until 2008; Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd spent most of 2007 camped out in Iowa running for president. The legislation passed by Congress in 2008 enabled Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to put Fannie and Freddie into federal conservatorship this summer when they failed. But it didn't prevent them from spewing a huge amount of toxic waste, in the form of subprime and Alt-A mortgages, into our financial institutions from 2004 to 2007. As Stephen Spruiell points out in The Corner on National Review Online, Fannie and Freddie spewed out $1 trillion worth (face value) of subprime mortgages between 2005 and 2007. That's a whole lot of toxic waste. For more detail, consult the items referred to in my previous blogpost on this subject (most of the comments seem to have been disputes about the plot line of the movie It's a Wonderful Life, which I should think could be settled by consulting a reference work).

Much if not all of that could have been prevented by a bill cosponsored by John McCain and supported by all the Republicans and opposed by all the Democrats in the Senate Banking Committee in 2005. That bill, which the Democrats stopped from passing, would have prohibited the GSEs from speculating on the mortgage-based securities they packaged. The GSEs' mission allegedly justifying their quasi-governmental status was to package or securitize such mortgages, but the lion's share of their profits—which determined top executives' bonuses—came from speculation.

John McCain has shied away from making this an issue, for reasons my U.S. News colleague Jim Pethokoukis speculates on. This National Republican Congressional Committee Web ad makes the point McCain has been avoiding. Jim Geraghty of the Campaign Spot blog at National Review Online seems exasperated by the McCain campaign's failure to exploit this issue. Excerpts:

Why can't John McCain and Sarah Palin make the points about how the crisis was built illustrated in the "Burning Down the House" (with the revised music) YouTube video? Could McCain please, please bring up some of this in Tuesday's debate?

Don't the American people deserve to know that Democrat Barney Frank, then ranking member and now chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said, "I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing"? Isn't the fact that the ranking Democrat in charge of oversight of Fannie Mae was in a sexual relationship with a high-ranking Fannie Mae executive a glaring conflict of interest? Isn't it worth noting that Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters insisted, "we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines"? Shouldn't the American people know that Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks insist that "there's been nothing that was indicated that's wrong with Fannie Mae"?

If nothing else, shouldn't we salute Democratic Rep. Artur Davis for saying, "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."

I talked with Artur Davis in the Speaker's Lobby Friday during the vote on the financial bailout/rescue package. He reiterated what he said here, and he also makes the fair point that Republicans made some mistakes too. As for the reference Geraghty makes to the fact that Barney Frank's partner Herb Moses worked at Fannie Mae, I think we should keep in mind the fact that Frank and Moses broke up in 1988 and that Moses quit working at Fannie Mae at about the same time. As far as I'm concerned, that's ancient history. And while in retrospect it's clear that Frank was wrong about the GSEs in 2003, he did work with the administration and pushed legislation through the House in 2007, so it seemed he was open to learning from experience.

Finally, check out this Fox News Channel-Fox Business News Channel documentary by David Asman.
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President Bush's resignation speech

Whatever our feelings about this president, it's obvious to all of us that his job, never easy, is today a crucible of frustration, vituperation, condemnation, lowered public approval and even downright opposition from some in his own party. I'm thinking that, though he has not uttered words like these, there are times President Bush might very much want to: (ps - thanks to the author!...T)

Normally, I start these things out by saying, "My fellow Americans."

Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore.

I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.
I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple: I'm fed up with you people.

I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world – or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damn lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media. Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that's despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of minority homeowners. And while we're mentioning m minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels, and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this "blood for oil" thing. If I were trading blood for oil, I would've already seized Iraq's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this "Bush Lied; People Died" crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be "discovered." Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official U.S. policy before I came into office. Some guy named Clinton established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the Cold War, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to outspend and out-tech them.

That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since Sept. 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of "Survivor."

Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch "American Idol."

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford; I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting, too. That means Pelosi is your new president. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America. Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.

PS - You might want to start learning Farsi, and buy a Koran.

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HOW FANNIE MAE & THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION STARTED THIS FINANCIAL MESS

This is from the New York Times, Izvestia of the American left...Proof positive that the Clinton Administration is directly responsible for this crisis, and liberalism in general the root cause. What a surprise, the press seems to have accidentally overlooked it!...T (ps - don't forget to note the date!)

September 30, 1999 - New York Times
- Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending


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. (Authors note: this man was Clinton Budget director before he was appointed CEO with absolutely no experience in financial markets whatsoever by Bill Clinton...T) ''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.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

(Read this!!!...T)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.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

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.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse 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. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

Full article in new window

Burning Down the House

A quick history of how this financial crisis hit - and who is responsible. Don't let the Drive-By MSM'ers get away with covering this one up. Even NBC can't Trotsky-up this one...T

All About Me

And finally, the irreplaceable VDH sums it all up for us. Give poor W a break, and his due:

- he really did try to fix social security (he was filibustered in the Senate)

- he really did try to pass a comprehensive energy bill for 7 years now, that would have provided for refining, exploration, and development (filibuster again)

- he really did try to prevent a depression in the post 9/11 days, lack of anti-terrorism insurance brought our economy to a standstill. On this, he succeeded

- he really did try to cut taxes on all working Americans. On this he succeeded

- he really did try to eradicate Islamic terrorism from the face of the Earth. None before him even tried

- he really did try to save New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. He was turned down in his offer to invoke the insurrection act, which was the only way to allow federal oversight, and was turned down by the democrat governor of Louisiana, and by New Orleans mayor, who were more interested in reaping the political bonanza then in saving their city.

- he really did try to do something about the sad history of the middle east, and about Saddam Hussein, about which none had done anything for decades. I still say that he is succeeding in this.

Yes, you can count me among the %30, and among the last %1 if it came to that. He will go down in history as a great, not good, president...T

Here is how our baby-boom generation solves problems:

-- Recently, George Bush went to Saudi Arabia to ask the ruling House of Saud to pump more oil. That request had about as much chance of success as the Democratic-led congressional effort to "sue" the Saudis in American courts for their selfish "price-gouging."

The current debate about energy in the United States has devolved into doing the same old thing -- consume, don't produce and complain -- while somehow expecting different results. Congress talks endlessly about the bright future of wind, solar and new fuels, while it stops us from getting through the messy present by utilizing abundant coal, shale and tar sands; nuclear power; and oil still untapped in Alaska and off our coasts.

-- For the past five years, we fretted over a "housing boom" that had priced an entire generation out of the market. In response, government and lending agencies got "creative" by relaxing standards to allow shaky "first-time" buyers into the red-hot market of high-priced homes. Home-improvement TV shows proliferated on how to "flip" houses and buy "no-down-payment" properties.

When the bubble inevitably burst, cries of outrage followed about how "they" (never "we") caused a "depression" in housing. Our leaders shrieked about greedy lenders and incompetent regulators who foreclosed on us -- never that the American people themselves caused much of the speculation problem, or that housing prices are finally becoming affordable again for new couples.

-- Over 70 percent of the American people, and a majority of Democratic senators, wanted to remove Saddam Hussein -- overwhelming support for the administration's war that rose even higher as a brilliant campaign finished off the Baathists in three weeks.

But when a messy insurgency erupted, suddenly we heard that our victory was ruined by "their stupid occupation."

-- The current Social Security system is unsustainable. But the baby boomers who gave us Botox aren't about to up the retirement age and freeze their own cost-of-living hikes to allow the cash-strapped next generation a little help in paying for our out-of-control benefits.

There is a pattern in all these dilemmas. And it is not conservative-versus-liberal politics, but generational chaos. Those who came of age in the 1960s now hold the reins of power and influence -- and we are starting to see why their values have worried almost everyone for nearly a half-century.

History has seen something like them before in the "blame them" years of Demosthenes' Athens, the self-indulgence of Julio-Claudian Rome, the "after me, the deluge" generation of late 18th-century France, the Gilded Age, and the Roaring Twenties.

What are the baby boomers' collective traits? Like all perpetual adolescents who suffer arrested development, we always want things both ways: Don't drill or explore for more energy, but nevertheless demand ever more fuel from other suppliers.

There are never bad and worse choices, but only a Never Never Land of good and even-better alternatives. Housing not only has to stay affordable for buyers, but also must appreciate in value to give instant equity to those who have just become owners.

When things don't go well, we always blame someone else. Why drill off Santa Barbara or Alaska when we can sue those terrible Saudis for not putting more oil platforms in their Persian Gulf?

And why accept that the conduct of all wars is flawed and victory goes usually to those who persevere in making the needed adjustments when we can just keep pointing fingers at the official who disbanded the Iraqi army or sent too few troops after the invasion?

The sense of self-importance is never far away. We "earned" our generous unsustainable Social Security benefits, so why should we have to suffer by cutting them?

Sociologists have correctly diagnosed the perfect storm that created the "me" generation -- sudden postwar affluence, sacrificing parents who did not wish us to suffer as they had in the Great Depression and World War II, and the rise of therapeutic education that encouraged self-indulgence.

Perhaps the greatest trademark of the 1960s cohort was self-congratulation. Baby boomers alone claimed to have brought about changes in civil rights, women's liberation and environmental awareness -- as if these were not prior concerns of earlier generations.

We apparently created all of our wealth rather than having inherited our roads, schools and bountiful infrastructure from someone else. And in our self-absorption, no one accepted that our notorious appetites created more problems than our supposed "caring" solved.

Our present problems were not really caused by an unpopular president, a spendthrift Congress, the neocon bogeymen, the greedy Saudis, shifty bankers or corporate oilmen in black hats and handlebar moustaches -- much less the anonymous "they."

The fault of this age, dear baby boomers, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Click here - Full article

The Shape of the Race to Come

Interesting take on the campaign to come. I tend to agree...T

I’ve spent a fair amount of time the last couple of weeks with conservatives of all ages and leanings. Call it my very own listening tour.

It began with a series of conversations with a group of Weekly Standard subscribers. Then, last week, I had lunch with the only three conservatives in Cambridge, Mass.; participated in an event in New York with the leadership of Vets for Freedom; mixed and mingled with Republicans before a speech in Michigan; and, on Friday, attended a reception for friends of Bill Buckley after his memorial service at St. Patrick’s, then discussed politics that evening with conservative college students at Georgetown University.

Apart from accumulating a few frequent flier miles, what do I have to show for my travels? I can report that lots of conservatives and Republicans expect Barack Obama to be our next president.

Some Republicans are grasping at the idea that a long, bitter fight for the Democratic nomination will weaken Obama. Their hopes are about to be dashed. After the results are in from Pennsylvania on April 22, or from Indiana and North Carolina on May 6, it should become clear that Hillary Clinton won’t be able to catch Obama in the overall popular vote. Without that possibility, Clinton won’t have a shot at persuading superdelegates to break her way.

So Clinton will probably concede by mid-May. She’ll be a gracious loser (they’ll hide Bill away somewhere). The weeks that follow will be a Democratic lovefest. And the money will keep pouring in to the Obama campaign, ensuring Democratic dominance of the airwaves in the summer.

The Democratic convention is the last week in August. Shortly before, Obama will pick his running mate. He’ll have good choices available to him: experienced figures like Sam Nunn, Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, a senator with military service like Rhode Island’s Jack Reed — or, of course, Hillary Clinton. Then the Hollywood-produced and directed Democratic convention will be all uplifting Change and inspiring Hope, and it will work.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign will be slow taking off. Fund-raising will continue to be anemic. And his team will need to manage a G.O.P. convention at which Bush and Cheney will have to be loyally hailed for their achievements, even as John McCain tries to turn the page.

It’s going to be a summer of love for Obama, and a tough few months for McCain.

McCain’s comeback should begin just after Labor Day, on Sept. 4, with a strong acceptance speech at the Republican convention. The presidential debates will also provide an opportunity. Expectations for Obama will be too high, people will forget he isn’t as good a debater as he is a speaker — and McCain could well rise to the occasion.

More fundamental will be the question of the discrepancy between the image of Obama the uniter and the reality of Obama the liberal. That hasn’t been much of a problem for Obama in the Democratic contest, since Clinton hasn’t attacked from the right or even the center.

But Republicans will. Last week, over drinks, one Republican strategist not affiliated with the McCain campaign mused about how an independent advertising effort against Obama might work. “Barack Obama: He’s not who you think he is” would be the theme. The supporting evidence would come from his left-wing voting record in Illinois and Washington, spiced up with fun video clips of Reverend Wright.
Who ultimately wins? In politics, as in life, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Many Republicans I know see the weaknesses of their party and of the McCain campaign all too clearly, and assume Obama will prevail.

But a surprising number of Democrats with whom I’ve spoken expect a McCain victory. One told me he was struck by the current polls showing a dead-even race, suggesting both a surprising openness to McCain among Americans who disapprove of Bush and a striking hesitation among the same voters about Obama.

Then there’s the fact that we’re at war. As a Congressional staffer put it, “Here’s something to consider: Although Hillary will be out in May, she may determine the outcome in November. McCain’s secret weapon — among Clinton supporters — may be Hillary’s 3 a.m. national security ad.”

And an experienced Democratic operative e-mailed: “Finally, I think [McCain’s] going to win. Obama isn’t growing in stature. Once I thought he could be Jimmy Carter, but now he reminds me more of Michael Dukakis with the flag lapel thing and defending Wright. Plus he doesn’t have a clue how to talk to the middle class. He’s in the Stevenson reform mold out of Illinois, with a dash of Harvard disease thrown in.”

In a close race, that “dash of Harvard disease” could be the difference.
Full Article - New Window

CBS Exposes Hillary Clinton Bosnia Trip

Clintonism at it's best - er, worst...T

The Long Defeat

Withering attack, and an interesting take coming from the NT Times David Brooks. Let's hope it's finally true: ding, dong, the Bitch is dead...T

Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign.

First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.

Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.
Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.

In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule?

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.

If she does the former, she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw. If she does not, she would soldier on doggedly, taking down as many allies as necessary.
Full Article - New Window

The Audacity of Selling Hope

A great insight into the "Cult of Obama" that is sweeping the left (and finally sweeping away Hillary Rob-em and Clintonism's foul oder)...T

This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity -- salvation -- for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a "salvational fervor" and "idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria."

"We are the hope of the future," sayeth Obama. We can "remake this world as it should be." Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country -- nay, we can become "a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest."

And believe they do... even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.

That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."

Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He's going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...Promises to fund his other promises by a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war -- with the hope, I suppose, that the (presumed) resulting increase in American prestige would compensate for the chaos to follow.

Democrats are worried that the Obama spell will break between the time of his nomination and the time of the election, and deny them the White House. My guess is that he can maintain the spell just past Inauguration Day. After which will come the awakening. It will be rude.
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Clinton Amnesia - The Other Side of The Coin

And now for the other side of the coin. The previous post laid out the case for McCain. This post reminds us of the devastating case against the Clintons, and why defeating their extra-constitutional power grab, willingly assisted and promoted by the drive-by M.S.M., must be defeated at all costs.

Remember this: Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich. Bill Clinton was sleeping with Rich's wife, Denise, who in turn was a huge contributor to Clinton's presidential library (i.e. bank account). Marc Rich was convicted in absentia for selling nuclear weapons technology to the Iranians, and of selling large arms caches to terrorists. What are we dealing with now in Iran? How about with terrorism? Question then - why did Bill Clinton pardon Marc Rich?...T


A form of collective amnesia, powered by media bent on forgetting inconvenient truths, continues to shield the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Despite setbacks and surprising obstacles to the cause of the inevitable one, the Clinton Teflon retained its remarkable durability in the weeks prior to Super Tuesday. The campaign that shall not engage in the mean-spirited politics of personal destruction discovered that Barak Obama worked with a slumlord in Chicago. The Clinton's were shocked! Shocked! To discover that the "remarkable candidate" they always refer to in public, you know, the quasi-Muslim, cocaine snorting, uppity Barak Hussein Obama, may have had dealings with a shady character in his past!

But damning photos of the righteous pair smiling happily with Barak's criminal friend were unearthed, and so the whole episode was dismissed.

Lesson: The colossal Clinton gall is matched only by the sure hand with which they manipulate events masterfully, in the face of the knowing contempt of the news media, the Democratic Party and lastly, of course, the American people.

Try and recall the actual Clinton Administration that seems to have disappeared from the collective memory. Bill blessedly closed his sordid time in power with an appropriate and delightful flourish, pardoning one hundred and forty convicted felons at the last hour while Hillary and her minions stole White House furnishings and property. They were, and are, beyond parody.

Yet today, with everything that has come to pass they are still frighteningly close to a second act. How can this be? Is it all the fault of a complicit and corrupt news media aligned to a left-wing agenda unconcerned by the means to power? Mostly. But not all.

A little history: In early 2001, focused on a new administration and amidst the turmoil of Florida chads still unsettling the political waters, Washingtonians and the political elite of both parties were understandably content to let the past malfeasance of Clinton and company go unpunished (and largely unexamined.) Remember also that there were FBI files, known to have been perused by who-knew-what Clinton operatives, and the considered opinion of the conscience-challenged was to live and let live.

And so the most corrupt administration in history fell into a vague pre-9/11 memory hole of carefree times and a booming tech bubble. Little wonder the sins of Bubba look amusing when viewed through the prism of Bin Laden, Al Queda and five years of war.

Bill was allowed to move on to give his expensive speeches and write his fictitious memoirs in tony Chappaqua, far from his white trash origins. Here, he imagined, a Nixon-like rehabilitation could occur. Meanwhile, his wife moved in on Patrick Moynihan's turf and wrested a secure Senate seat in liberal New York. (I find it charming that Hillary chose the home of Boss Tweed Tammany Hall as the destination of her carpet bag.)

With the coming of the new media, the 24-hour news cycle, and ubiquitous cable news operations, ample time and resources are now available to seriously consider the history and meaning of the recent past. Hillary's History is available for review.
Here is a list of the most popular Golden Oldies:

-Whitewater,
-Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan,
-Rose Law Firm,
-1000% profit Cattle Futures,
-Castle Grande,
-The McDougals,
-Web Hubbell,
-Tyson Foods,
-Lippo Group,
-Vince Foster,
-Travel Office firings,
-David Hale,
-Paula Jones,
-Jim Guy Tucker,
-Chinagate,
-James Riady,
-Mike Espy,
-Billy Dale,
-Monica Lewinsky,
-John Huang,
-Ron Brown,
-Gore Buddhist fund-raising,
-"No controlling legal authority",
-FBI filegate,
-Hillary's missing subpoenaed Rose Law firm files reappear in White House,
-Janet Reno,
-Charlie Trie,
-Bruce Babbitt,
-Maria Hsia,
-Kathleen Willey,
-Sidney Blumenthal,
-Vernon Jordan,
-Juanita Broderick,
-Pardongate,
-Marc Rich.

Each scandal attached to each of the above names and events is both serious and abounding with investigative possibilities. And so many remain unresolved. Surely a rich harvest awaits the intrepid journalist investigator, but major news media will never take on the Clinton record. The treatment of Sandy Berger's theft of classified pre-9/11 documents is only the most recent and egregious example of a media scandal written in water.

Former associates and supporters of the Clintons that prefer Obama are catching on to the media double standard with chagrin. Poor Bill Bradley, the former New Jersey Senator and Democrat presidential candidate, has been reduced to begging ineffectually on MSNBC for the list of donors to the Clinton Library to be released. He is metaphorically talking to a wall. For the pugnacious and relentless foes of Scooter Libby, the Clinton Administration scandals simply did not happen.

The fact that this couple is being seriously considered for another run is as damning a fact as any moral, economic or political evidence of our decline as a nation. For, more than the usual apathy and healthy cynicism directed towards the political system, it betrays an immaturity and irresponsibility that questions the wisdom of universal suffrage.
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Therapeutics 101

This rumination, below, pretty much sums up the electoral process so far - fear of the return of Bill Clinton. Though I have to agree (as I share it!), one still wonders what would happen were Obama to be the dem nominee? The two seminal events that are shaking American Political life to it's very core are these:

1: The 8 years of corruption and decline under the cabal of Bill Clinton with the willing collaboration of the drive by MSM -
2: The following 8 years of the so-called "Bush Derangement Syndrome" - stoked 1st by the Clinton Impeachment and then by the 2000 election recount and the war in Iraq -

These 16 years have torn our body politic to its core, literally uprooting our republican (small "r") heritage and traditions. I truly wish there was a transcendant figure out there now, such as a Reagan or FDR, to bind our wounds. We are left with hoping for the best...T

"My interest is not antipathy to Mitt Romney. I met and liked him. I have no grudge against Mike Huckabee. But I fear, I confess, another eight years of Bill Clinton—never brought home more than by his recent multimillion-dollar glad-handing trip to Kazakhstan to cement a uranium deal for Frank Giustra, who then donated generously to his various foundations"

Bill can’t stop campaigning if he wanted to. He can’t cease talking about himself if he was paid a billion dollars. He can’t stop lusting after the limelight of the White House at any price.

But he can change his approach after almost losing the nomination for his wife and himself. So today’s appearance at a Los Angeles African-American Church saw a reconstituted Bill Clinton as the Reverend Swaggert begging for forgiveness after one of his assorted sins.

Yes, he still talked about his brilliant administration as the chief reason to have his wife continue it. In praising Al Gore he talked of “we”. But now there was no more finger pointing, no more red-faced, cheek-swelling outbursts, and no more flashing eyes and thundering voice...

If Bill before slandered, accused and lectured at poor us who did not appreciate his genius, he now evoked Jesus, as his prophet to politely beg us to vote for him and her. “We all want to be in a gang,” he tearfully stammered to his African-American audience, as he reminded his listeners that he learned about gangs from none other than Maxine Waters—the most prominent Californian African-American to endorse his wife.

One final note. Bill kept talking of “Our government doesn’t————”. Fill in the blanks how we shortchange veterans, blacks, students, the poor, the indebted, the homeowner, and the sick. Aside from whether his accusations are true (most are not), one wonders, are not these so-called pathologies of longer standing than the past seven years? Were there no foreclosures, none without health insurance, no homeless, no racism, no evil whatsoever during his own tenure? Did George Bush alone undo all that Bill Clinton had bequeathed?...

I understand that the base is angry not just because of McCain’s immigration or tax cut heresies, but mostly one of attitude and past pride in opposing conservatives. The complaint then is often that ‘McCain snubbed us once in an unnecessary condescending manner, but kisses up now since he can’t win without us” . Perhaps all that is true. But I would prefer to look to conservatives’ own self-interest—and it is not with Hillary or Barack.

My interest is not antipathy to Mitt Romney. I met and liked him. I have no grudge against Mike Huckabee. But I fear, I confess, another eight years of Bill Clinton—never brought home more than by his recent multimillion-dollar glad-handing trip to Kazakhstan to cement a uranium deal for Frank Giustra, who then donated generously to his various foundations.
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Clintons - Pigs!

The cartoon neglects to include the Clinton's subliminal cries of "Black man! Jesse Jackson lover! Welfare recipient! affirmative action candidate! , (and of course) nigger! Now the world is seeing them for who they are, and always have been: pigs - filthy, amoral, corrupt pigs...T

Clintonia and S.P.Q.R?

VDH expounds here on a number of topics - on John McCain the candidate, and the underestimated genius of Rush Limbaugh, etc. But most interesting by far is his take on the possible demise of the Clinton's, and his view that this election is easily winnable for the Republicans.

I concur entirely. The Clinton's are as despicable as were the worst of the dictators and emperors of Imperial Rome; entirely narcissistic, power mad, and willing to do anything to undermine their own country to preserve their own political power...T

Republicans, like it or not, have been given a great gift. Just three months ago Hillary was coronated in the media as our next President, as polls showed her winning against all comers. Then came her demonization of Obama and the entrance of pit-bull Bill—and the country was reminded of the Clinton viciousness and the entire fraud of modern liberal thinking.

Identity politics? Good except when your square white wife must win to get you back in power? Feminism? Women rule—except when they are surrogates for a male return to power at any cost? The policies of personal destruction? Terrible—unless you must engage in them to destroy the black candidate to save the black constituency. A liberal slanted media? Great—until liberals begin to see that Clintonites are embedded all over the networks and can’t quite be fair to Obama.

All this the Clintoni have exposed and the results are clear: a moderate-conservative nominee, at a time when a Republican President has a 35% approval rating, will still beat a left-wing Democrat. And yes, moderate Democrats, who watch this Clintonian ruthlessness, will be turned off and may well vote for a McCain in key states like Ohio, Michigan, Florida and elsewhere not because McCain is a liberal, but because they can disguise their embarrassment and disgust for Clinton by claiming they voted for a national hero

Clinton in South Carolina

I was listening tonight to a C-Span broadcast of Bill Clinton’s stump speech for his wife in South Carolina. Here are my conclusions:

1. In her mid-twenties, right out of law school, Hillary’s philanthropy and social service were of such a magnitude that they almost immediately found their way into federal law. Indeed, much of our comprehensive legislation concerning children and the poor had their geneses through her twenty-something work. The audience is to believe that leaving Yale Law School and forgoing politics back in Illinois were moral decisions for which we all are forever in her debt. Like Bill, she has suffered for all of us.

2. There is really not much of a social safety network for anyone. We may be giving half our incomes over to federal, state, and local taxes, spending 70% of our budget on social programs, and at the apex of large government in our history, but none of this is adequate. Instead, veterans, children, the poor, and aged, all of them are simply being neglected—and only Hillary has the savvy to create enough new social programs to save those who need to be saved. Any social pathology is entirely due to collective indifference or government neglect. Since the individual through drunkenness, drug use, ignorance, evil, or selfishness is never responsible for the results of his pathology, it would be silly to ask of him to clean up his own mess.

3. Almost every anecdote is prefaced by “When I was Governor, Hillary…” or “When I was president, she…” By implicit assumption, if we vote for Hillary we are voting in name for a co-presidency, but in fact, for a third and fourth term for Bill.

4. The problem is not that Bill Clinton occasionally lies—he does. But instead, almost serially he exaggerates and fudges—and in ways beyond not inhaling or redefining “is”, or insisting oral sex is not sex. The result is a Forrest Gump like effect, that we are to believe he and Hillary were the font of every almost every liberal gift of the last quarter-century—Yale, then Arkansas being the Mecca of social change.

5. It would be cruel, but understandable to ask amid these long encomia on Hillary’s character, her talent, and her morality—prefaced by Bill’s commentary that he almost alone realized her singular gifts, why in the world, then, did he spend over thirty years trying to escape her in almost every way imaginable? Why if she walked on water, did he find company, carnality, conversation with Paula Jones or Gennifer Flowers, or feel the need to talk trash and more with Monica? In other words, he is asking the voter to take on a partnership, a political marriage if you will, that he, mutatis mutandis, never would or has. It reminds me of the last time I bought a Chevy S-10. The local Selma salesman went on at great length about its reliability, its power, and economy, its great price, and then I asked him whose small, like-sized Toyota Tacoma was parked nearby and was it for sale? No need to tell you to whom it belonged.

More on McCain

I take McCain at his word that—once chastised on immigration—he will close the border. Ending illegal immigration, restoring fiscal sanity, cutting spending, and insisting on victory in the war are the essential issues, and on all he is far preferable to Hillary. There really is a difference between “suspension of disbelief” and “no substitute for victory.” That is why a number of conservatives have and will continue to hold their noses and endorse McCain...

...A better tactic than sitting out the election would be to unite around the nominee, and then put his feet to the fire on key issues. If it is McCain, then demand he go on Limbaugh’s show for an hour, or speak before social conservatives, and take the heat.
We are watching something historic—the crumbling of the Clinton façade. Its disintegration does not mean Hillary won’t be President, only that she can now be beaten when just a few months ago that was deemed impossible. Strange to say: the election is in Republican hands...

Rush the Genius?

I note in passing that, contrary to elite opinion, I am mightily impressed by most in talk radio. A Hugh Hewitt or Dennis Prager is far brighter than most academics I met over the last thirty years, not to mention far better spoken. We also forget that Limbaugh is not just a pundit, but a gifted comedian. His impersonations and imitations are in the first rank of comedians. Note the recent writers’ strike shut down or emasculated lesser talents like Leno, Letterman, and Maher, but reminded us that Limbaugh daily, for three hours non-stop can do his own material. He had all the requisite talents—quick wit, well read, good memory, excellent delivery, and a comic sense.

The Left never saw that. They thought offering up antithetical shows would do the trick, not understanding that Rush succeeded wildly, not just because of his commentary, but because he really is a gifted entertainer, a sort of combination Jack Benny, Lenny Bruce, Don Rickles, and Rich Little all in one, with the insight of a Buckley or Novak. Really a gifted guy. If he bit his lip Clinton-style or socialized with the literati, or didn’t have to do ads, he would be considered by critics as the genius that he really is
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Star Whores

"Join me! - and I shall complete your trainingggg - take your hand at my side, and we shall rule the galaxy as father and son (er, husband and wife)!"...T

Take it from W.G. Fields himself!

Wow, what chutzpah! This from the biggest liar, and worst person, ever to hold the office of the Presidency...T