The low low price of Bart Stupak's soul

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ACORN fights back

If you've been wondering how ACORN and its mainstream media allies were going to try to rescue the criminal community organization from the avalanche of trouble that two young conservative investigative journalists and their hidden camera have brought upon it here is your answer:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Much of America discovered James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles through their hidden-camera, make-believe pimp and prostitute videos of ACORN employees giving advice about establishing a brothel with underage hookers.

But as far back as 2006 - well before the videos became a national sensation and conservative rallying cry - the fresh-faced O'Keefe and Giles connected with a pair of Washington conservative institutions that boast programs training ideological journalists.

Now, due to coordinated promotion of the undercover sting footage by influential players in the conservative media, Giles and O'Keefe have gone from part of the pack to movement superstars.

Giles, a 20-year-old sophomore at Florida International University, spent the summer on a $1,200-a-month internship with the National Journalism Center, a training organization whose alumni include conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Immediately after graduating Rutgers University in 2006, O'Keefe, 25, was paid to set up magazines and newspapers on university campuses for the Leadership Institute, which recruits potential conservative public policy and media stars.

Each has other credentials that place them squarely in the network of activists who believe liberal-leaning mainstream media willfully ignore stories that illustrate the failings of the political left and its leaders.

. . . On Wednesday it [ACORN] sued O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart over the Baltimore video, saying Maryland law requires consent to create sound recordings.Brian Kettenring, deputy director of national operations for ACORN, contended that conservative media , including Fox, was behind the project.

"O'Keefe and Giles try to make it sound as if they concocted their sordid video scheme on a whim - as if they had no major backers," Kettenring said. "ACORN's lawsuit will smoke out the true motives and conservative money behind these attacks on a community organization that works to better the lives of ordinary Americans every day."

First of all what is so "sordid" about a couple of journalists checking up on an organization which has received millions and is slated to receive billions of dollars of taxpayer money?

Especially when that organization already has a long history of criminal activity?

Those of you who are old enough may remember those days when the CBS television show 60 Minutes sometimes acted as something other than a propaganda tool for the far left. In that vanished bygone age they would do things exactly like this to expose corruption and inform the public.

But back to ACORN's pathetic attempt to deflect attention from the essentially criminal nature of their organization.

ACORN's contention is that if it can be demonstrated that Giles and O'Keefe have ever in their lives spoken to anyone who knows Glenn Beck or anyone else who works at FOX News or if they have in the past ever had any contact with any kind of conservative organization then their project is illegitimate.

First of all the issue is what the video tapes reveal about the mindset and operating principles of ACORN and its employees NOT who originally thought up the sting.

Second, ACORN and its allies have not provided one shred of evidence that the project did not begin exactly as Ms. Giles describes it. The fact that she and Mr. O'Keefe spoke with some members of the media about how to best reveal the results of their investigation means nothing other than the fact that they are intelligent.

Giles and O'Keefe knew that the mainstream media and all of the cable news channels except FOX have become nothing more than the propaganda organs of the far left. They knew that if they released all of the video tapes they shot in various ACORN offices at the same time that while the conservative media would make a big deal of it for a couple of days but the mainstream media would ignore it. The news cycle would move on and the story would be effectively buried.

By rolling out the tapes one after another over a period of days the MSM's willful ignorance became both manifest and embarrassing and the Democrat controlled congress, which would have loved to pretend that this story did not exist, was forced to take action.

Now both the Census Bureau and the IRS have severed their ties to the corrupt organization and congress has stripped them of federal funds (goodbye billions of stimulus dollars).

ACORN as an organization is so far to the political left that from where they are standing Barack Obama looks mainstream. The fact that ACORN believes that its salvation lies in proving that Giles and O'Keefe had some kind of conservative backing is very revealing. It would seem that to them the truth of an accusation has absolutely no relevance. The only thing that matters is who is making the charge, what are their motives and who do they associate with.

It isn't going to work. When ACORN employees didn't bat an eye at the prospect of helping a pimp bring 13-year-old girls into the country to use as sex slaves they removed themselves so far beyond the pale that they will never be able to find their way back.

The ACORNs don't fall far from the tree

From Fox News (what other major news outlet is covering this?):

A fourth video by an independent filmmaker posing as a pimp along with a purported prostitute has surfaced depicting an ACORN staffer in California assisting the couple in their quest to obtain housing for their illegal sex business.

Much like in their previous undercover stings at the group's offices in Baltimore, Washington and Brooklyn, N.Y., filmmaker James O'Keefe, 25, and his 20-year-old partner Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute named "Eden," were given assistance on Aug. 17 from a staffer at ACORN's office in San Bernardino on how to avoid detection by law enforcement. The couple even tell ACORN staffer Tresa Kaelke — who admits on the videotape to previously having sex for money — that they plan on bringing in 12 girls from El Salvador to work in a home they hope to acquire via the community organization.

Do you suppose that our Justice Dept. might take a few minutes off from prosecuting CIA officers whose only crime is keeping the nation safe from another 9/11 style attack in order to open a RICO investigation into ACORN?

Of course to ask the question is to answer it. The Obama administration is not going to do anything that might result in the records of a corrupt criminal radical left-wing organization that has such close ties to Obama himself being brought to light.

This is why ACORN will not carry through on its threat to sue O'Keefe and Giles. There is no way that they are going to create a situation in which these two investigative journalists, who have proven that they know exactly what ACORN is, will have carte blanche to subpoena their records and depose their employees.

ACORN is going to bluff and bluster and spin and depend upon their allies in the mainstream media and the Democrat party to cover for them and try to ride this out.

They will fail.

Reaching the boiling point

From Tampa Bay Online:

What was intended to be a town hall discussion on President Barack Obama's health care reform proposal dissolved into a shouting match with shoving and scuffles in Ybor City tonight.

The event brought home to Tampa the recent phenomenon of angry opponents of Obama's proposal disrupting town hall meetings by Democratic members of Congress during the August recess.

This meeting was organized by Democratic state Rep. Betty Reed but was to include comments on the proposal by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a strong supporter.

Castor tried to speak for nearly 15 minutes but the crowd drowned her out, chanting, "You work for us,'' "Tyranny, tyranny,'' and "Read the bill." She ultimately left the meeting early, further angering some attendees.

Why should one sit in silence and listen to someone spout what you know to be lies? Why should an elected official, someone who is not a master of the people but a servant - like the people who mop the floor and clean the toilets - expect to be treated with respect when they stand up to knowingly and maliciously lie to the people they are supposed to work for?

These Democrats who are going out to try and convince their constituents to support their party's socialized health care scheme are attempting to convince the citizens of this nation to accept much lower quality health care which will cost them much more money in the long run and which will enslave them and their children in chains of dependence to a federal government which will have become much more powerful and much less responsible to and responsive of the people. And those politicians know that this is what they are doing.

If they truly believe that the new Marxist health care system they are attempting to build for the citizens of this nation is better than what we have now then why have they exempted themselves and their families from that new system?

You do know that they have built into the legislation an exemption for themselves, don't you? They will not have to go the the same filthy overcrowded clinics and wait in line for hours and hours and hours to see a doctor like the rest of us will. They will not have to spend years on waiting lists for surgery, sometimes living in agony and sometimes dying for lack of treatment, like people in Europe and Canada do. They will not be told that the drugs they need are too expensive. They will not be told that they are too old to make treating them "cost effective". They will not be told that they are too fat or have smoked too much or drank too much to deserve treatment.

But the rest of us will.

Friends, the fact that they have exempted themselves from the system they are trying to impose upon the rest of us proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that they know EXACTLY what they are trying to do to the rest of us!

The fact that they do know exactly what they are trying to ram down our throats and will stand up and lie to our faces about it forever removes any obligation to treat these scumbags with any shred of respect or even civility. They deserve nothing from us but absolute and perfect contempt! They have made themselves the enemies of the American people and they deserve to be treated like it.

And I am profoundly glad to see huge numbers of my fellow citizens coming to agree with me.

The problems began when a crowd of around 500, many of them recruited to attend by interest groups both for and against the proposal, sought to enter the meeting room. The room, in the offices of the Hillsborough County Children's Board on East Palm Avenue, has a capacity of only about 250.

Several hundred people, mostly opponents, wound up outside or packing a hallway leading into the meeting room. Some scuffled with members of the sponsoring groups who manned the doorway.

One man who said he was injured and intended to file a police complaint, Randy Arthur of Oldsmar, was outside the meeting room with his wife, Kathy Arthur, when organizers tried to close the doors.

She said he was slammed against a wall. He later talked to police officers, his knit shirt ripped and a few scratches visible on his chest.

Among the crowd outside, opponents and a smaller number of proponents got into occasional shouting matches.

After trying to speak, Castor left at about 6:40 p.m., taking jeers as she left.

"They're hiding from their constituents. She works for us and needs to listen,'' said Karen Jaroch, a Tampa homemaker and organizer for the 9-12 Project, set up by TV commentator Glenn Beck, which had recruited its members to attend.

These people, who in their own minds hold a place closer to medieval aristocracy than public employees, are simply unused to being held to account for their actions. It angers and frightens them and their first impulse is to do what some 12th century baron would do and have the ungrateful serfs flogged.

Castor spokeswoman Ellen Gedalius said Castor left because her part of the event was finished.

"We said all along our role was to come and give an update on the bill in Congress,'' Gedalius said, noting that Reed, not Castor, organized and sponsored the meeting. "That's what Betty Reed asked us to do … and that's what we did.''

But Reed said afterward that she encouraged Castor to leave because, "She couldn't get a word through."

Gedalius noted that Castor will have a town hall meeting by telephone on Aug. 13 and that her office has been receiving hundreds of comments on the health care issue.

The meeting was organized by Reed plus the Service Employees International Union, other unions and Organizing for America, a liberal group that grew out of the Obama presidential campaign.

SEIU is a union which violates the law by using member dues for political activities and Organizing for America is an Obama Marxist front organization. Two ultra-left organizations attempt to pack the meeting (one breaking federal law to do so) and yet it is the opponents of the legislation who are accused of "astroturfing".

Some opponents accused the organizers of trying to stack the crowd by allowing early admission to those on their side. Reed denied that, saying those admitted early were organizers setting up the room.

In any case, opponents appeared to outnumber proponents both inside and outside.

Of course they did, all you have to do is check the polls to see that those who are protesting this socialist boondoggle are representing the majority of the people.

After doors to the meeting room closed, some of those outside crowded around the windows of the meeting room, where they held up signs and chanted.

In the last week or so, similar disruptive protests have erupted at town hall meetings in several states.

Democrats, including White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, have said the disruptions were organized attacks aimed at Democrats by conservative, anti-health care reform interest groups. Several protestors at Thursday's meeting in Tampa angrily rejected that contention.

Castor's staff said Reed planned the meeting and invited Castor before the controversy became so heated.

Reed said she set up the meeting because, "I represent a number of people who ask questions about what's going on with health care, so I thought it would be good to put on a meeting and have the congresswoman come in and give an update."

Reed said she was shocked by the number of people who turned out and some of their reactions.

"When you get to the point of possible violence, you've gone over the edge," she said.

When politicians reach the point where they have driven law abiding and patriotic citizens to the point of possible violence THEY have gone over the edge!

In a news conference prior to the town hall, Castor had said, "I do expect some rabble-rousing."

She said the protesters who have been appearing at town hall forums on health care "would have been protesting Medicare … they would never have accepted Social Security."

Medicare and Social Security - two massively expensive federal government programs which the federal government has mismanaged and are now all but bankrupt. They represent tens of trillions of dollars worth of liabilities which the government has no means to pay for. Americans have paid into a system which was supposed to create accounts to fund retirement income and health care in their old age but congress has looted the trust funds in order to pay for vote buying pork projects and now that the Baby Boom generation is nearing retirement age the entire system is threatening to collapse.

This should be all the American people need to consider when contemplating whether the government should be entrusted to take over the nation's health care industry. We are talking about one seventh of the American economy. Do we really want to turn it over to a bureaucracy which will have all the compassion of the IRS, all the customer service skills of the DMV and the fiscal responsibility of, well the federal government (the only entity in the world ever to pay $600.00 for a plastic toilet seat)?

Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said the department was told a couple hundred people would show up and sent a squad of 10-15 officers, two marked cars, two supervisors and some undercover officers.

As the crowd grew, more were brought in – mainly for traffic control, she said, but they also broke up some scuffles.

She said no arrests were made.

All in all very instructive in helping us understand the amount of anger this attempt to royally screw over the American people in generating.

It also gives us a foretaste of what the left will do to support Comrade Obama in his efforts to turn the US into the new Cuba.

Expect criminal organizations like ACORN and the New Black Panther Party (as well as some labor unions) to start bringing in thugs to intimidate and even attack protesters at these meetings (think Hitler's SA attacking rival political party's meetings). Of course the mainstream media will spin this as peaceful pro-health care reformers defending themselves against attacks by right-wing neo-Nazis.

Remember this is all to the good. The public has Obama's measure now and the time when he was trusted is rapidly vanishing in the rear view mirror. The more he works for this the less people are going to like it and the less they are going to like anything else Obama advocates in the future.

Obama is locking himself into being a one-term president and Nancy Pelosi is handing congress back to the GOP in 2010. Hell, even Harry Reid looks to be defeated in his bid for reelection next year.

I made the point last year that sometimes it takes a Jimmy Carter to make the nation ready for a Ronald Reagan. Well the GOP has three Reagans waiting in the wings. Palin, Perry and Jindal are all capable of doing the jog and indications are that any of them would be willing to step up.

Welcome to Chicago

From FOXNews.com:

The government watchdog President Obama canned for allegedly being "confused" and "disoriented" fired back sharply Wednesday, saying the White House explanation for removing him was "insufficient," "baseless" and "absolutely wild."

Gerald Walpin, who until last week was the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service, told FOXNews.com that part of Obama's explanation was a "total lie" and that he feels he's got a target on his back for political reasons.

"I am now the target of the most powerful man in this country, with an army of aides whose major responsibility today seems to be to attack me and get rid of me," Walpin said.

Facing bipartisan criticism for the firing, Obama sought to allay congressional concerns with a letter to Senate leaders Tuesday evening explaining his decision. In the letter, White House Special Counsel Norman Eisen wrote that Walpin was "confused" and "disoriented" at a May board meeting, was "unduly disruptive," and exhibited a "lack of candor" in providing information to decision makers.

"That's a total lie," Walpin said of the latter charge. And he said the accusation that he was dazed and confused at one meeting out of many was not only false, but poor rationale for his ouster.

"It appears to suggest that I was removed because I was disabled -- based on one occasion out of hundreds," he said.

"I would never say President Obama doesn't have the capacity to continue to serve because of his (statement) that there are 56 states," Walpin said, adding that the same holds for Vice President Biden and his "many express confusions that have been highlighted by the media." Obama mistakenly said once on the campaign trail that he had traveled to 57 states.

Walpin concluded that his firing stems from bad blood between him and the board, as well as with Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson -- an Obama supporter whom he had investigated for alleged misuse of federal funds. He said his performance at the May meeting drew criticism because he issued two reports critical of the board. In one, he criticized the settlement reached in the Johnson case; in the other, he criticized the use of millions of dollars for a program at the City University of New York.

"The board at that meeting was clearly angry at my temerity," he said.

It will be interesting to see if all the leftists who worked themselves into apoplexy over the fact that President Bush fired a handful of federal prosecutors because they were not doing their job will feel similar outrage over President Obama's firing of this man who was dong his job.

I'm not holding my breath.

Of course this is nothing more than politics Chicago-style. When we elected a gutter crawling Chicago Democrat machine politican to be our president we dug a branch tunnel from the Chicago sewer system directly into the White House and now the sewage is flowing into the Oval Office at high pressure.

The next scandal

Rick Moran writes in American Thinker:

Doug Ross and Joey Smith are doing a helluva job in researching the data on the Chrysler dealer closings story. And in typical internet fashion, the story now has some legs and is being addressed by other outlets.

Notably, World Net Daily - sometimes not the most reliable of sources - has a piece of straightforward reporting where they scanned the 789 dealers being closed, matched the donations to presidential candidates, and discovered the following:

$450,000 donated to GOP presidential candidates; $7,970 to Sen. Hillary Clinton;
$2,200 to John Edwards and $450 to Barack Obama.

What does this mean?

It could mean nothing. It is a given that a large percentage of dealers - small businessmen - are Republican to begin with. Liberal poll expert Nate Silver pegs the percentage at 8-1 which matches up pretty well with what Doug and others have found. Nate was looking at donors to political campaigns from all car dealers and that shakes out to be overwhelmingly GOP.

Therefore, it is probably useless to try and make a case based on the amount of monies donated to the two parties. What is needed is an analysis of which dealers were allowed to stay open and whether they benefited from GOP dealers that were closed..Doug Ross came up with some interesting coincidences based on his analysis of one dealership group owned by prominent Democrats where their dealerships were all allowed to stay open while neutral or GOP donor dealerships were closed. He made this connection in three separate territories where the Democratic auto group - RLJ - operated.

This is compelling but still not enough evidence. In the end, what is needed is solid information about who exactly made the individual decisions to close the dealers.

We know it wasn't the bankruptcy judge. We also know that the criteria for closing announced by Chrysler is not being followed. In dozens of cases, profitable dealers are being closed for no apparent reason.

So if the judge and Chrysler had little or no say in who was being torpedoed, that leaves the White House auto task force shoving these decisions down Chrysler's throat. So far, Chrysler has remained quiet. But eventually, they are going to have to say something in response to the building pressure put on them by dealers who think they are being treated unfairly and a media that may be getting more curious.

Go read the rest, it is worth your time.

Does anyone out there, even you lefties, doubt that Obama and his henchmen are fully capable of doing something like this?

Of course the narcissist-in-chief would see this as a chance to punish political enemies and reward political allies. He is a CHICAGO machine politican.

How could he look at the world any differently?

Growing Big Brother

Mark Steyn on gets with the program, or programs as the case may be:

I was in Vermont the other day and made the mistake of picking up the local paper. Impressively, it contained a quarter-page ad, a rare sight these days. The rest of the page was made up by in-house promotions for the advertising department's special offer on yard-sale announcements, etc. But the one real advertisement was from something called SEVCA. SEVCA is a "nonprofit agency," just like The New York Times, General Motors and the state of California. And it stands for "South-Eastern Vermont Community Action."

Why, they're "community organizers," just like the president! The designated "anti-poverty agency" is taking out quarter-page ads in every local paper because they're "seeking applicants for several positions funded in full or part by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)" – that's the "stimulus" to you and me. Isn't it great to see those bazillions of stimulus dollars already out there stimulating the economy? Creating lots of new jobs at SEVCA, in order to fulfill the president's promise to "create or keep" 2.5 million jobs. At SEVCA, he's not just keeping all the existing ones, but creating new ones, too. Of the eight new positions advertised, the first is:

"ARRA Projects Coordinator."

Gotcha. So the first new job created by the stimulus is a job "coordinating" other programs funded by the stimulus. What's next?

"Grantwriter."

That's how they spell it. Like in "Star Wars" – Luke Grantwriter waving his hope saber as instructed by his mentor Obi-Bam Baracki ("May the Funds be with you!"). The Grantwriter will be responsible for writing grant applications "to augment ARRA funds." So the second new job created by stimulus funding funds someone to petition for additional funding for projects funded by the stimulus.

The third job is a "Marketing Specialist" to increase "public awareness of ARRA-funded services." Rural Vermont's economy is set for a serious big-time boom: The critical stimulus-promotion industry, stimulus-coordination industry and stimulus-supplementary-funding industry are growing at an unprecedented rate. The way things are going we'll soon need a Stimulus-Coordination Industry Task Force and Impact Study Group. By the way, these jobs aren't for everyone. "Knowledge of ARRA" is required. So if, say, you're the average United States senator who voted for ARRA without bothering to read it you're not qualified for a job as an ARRA Grantwriter.

I don't want to give the impression that every job funded by the stimulus is a job coordinating the public awareness of programs for grant applications to coordinate the funding of public awareness coordination programs funded by the stimulus. SEVCA is also advertising for a "Job Readiness Program Coordinator." This is a job coordinating the program that gets people ready to get a job. For example, it occurred to me, after reading the ad, that I might like to be a "Job Readiness Program Coordinator." But am I ready for it? Increasing numbers of us are hopelessly unready for jobs. Ever since last November, many Americans have been ready for free health care, free day care, free college, free mortgages – and, once you get a taste for that, it's hardly surprising you're not ready for gainful employment. I only hope there are enough qualified "Job Readiness Program Coordinators" out there, and that they don't have to initiate a Job Readiness Program Coordinator Readiness Program. As the old novelty song once wondered, "Who Takes Care Of The Caretaker's Daughter While The Caretaker's Busy Taking Care?" Who coordinates programs for the Job Readiness Program Coordinator while the Job Readiness Program Coordinator's busy readying for his job? If you hum it, I'll put in for the stimulus funding.

Oh, and let's not forget the new job of "VITA Program Coordinator." VITA? That's "Volunteer Income Tax Assistance." It's an IRS program designed "to help low- and moderate-income taxpayers complete their tax returns at no cost." The words "no cost," by the way, are used in the new Webster's-defined sense of "massive public expenditure." Whoops, I mean massive public "investment." You might think, were you a space alien recently landed from Planet Zongo, that, if tax returns are so complicated that "low- and moderate-income taxpayers" have difficulty filling them in, the obvious solution would be to make the tax code less complex. But that's just the unfamiliar atmosphere on Planet Earth making you lighthearted and prone to cockamamie out-of-this-world fancies. Put in for a Job Readiness Program, and you'll soon get with the program.

Of course, it's not just "low- and moderate-income taxpayers" who have difficulty completing their tax returns. So do high-income taxpayers like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Tragically, they're ineligible for the "Volunteer Income Tax Assistance" program. Indeed, the treasury secretary seemed under the misapprehension that it was a "Volunteer Income Tax" program, which would be a much better idea. But, being ineligible for VITA, Secretary Geithner was forced to splash out $49.95 for TurboTax and, simply by accidentally checking the "No" box instead of "Yes" at selected moments, was able to save himself thousands of dollars in confiscatory taxation! Oops, my mistake, I meant that, tragically, by being unable to complete his tax return due to a lack of Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, Timothy Geithner was the only one of 300 million Americans to pass the Treasury Secretary Job Readiness Program.

SEVCA serves two rural counties with a combined total of a little over 40,000 households. If you wanted to stimulate the economy, you'd take every dime allocated to Windsor and Windham counties under ARRA and divide it between those households. But, if you want to stimulate bureaucracy, dependency and the metastasization of approved quasi-governmental interest-group monopolies as the defining features of American life, then ARRA is the way to go. Oh, you scoff: ARRA, go on, you're only joking. I wish I were. We're spending trillions we don't have to create government programs to coordinate the application for funds to create more programs to spend even more trillions we don't have.

The stimulus will do nothing for the economy, but it will dramatically advance the cause of statism (as Mark Levin rightly calls it). Last week's vote in California is a snapshot of where this leads: The gangster regime in Sacramento is an alliance between a corrupt and/or craven political class wholly owned by a public sector union-bureaucracy extortion racket. So what if the formerly Golden State goes belly-up? They'll pass the buck to Washington, and those of us in nonprofligate jurisdictions will get stuck with the tab. At some point, the dwindling band of citizens still foolish enough to earn a living by making things, selling things or providing services other than government-funded program coordination will have to vote against not just taxes but specific agencies and programs – hundreds and thousands of them.

The bad news is that our children will not enjoy the American Dream. The good news is they'll be able to apply for an American Dream Readiness Assistance Coordination Grantwriter Program. May the Funds be with you!

One of the many reasons America has prospered so greatly is that our freedoms (economic, political and religious) have attracted the brightest and hardest working citizens, or often subjects, of other nations. Mr. Steyn is one such import. Driven out of his native Canada by political persecution (they literally put him on trial for expressing his opinions) he enriches the United States with his wisdom and wit.

More Democrats acting like Democrats

From Front Page Magazine:

News broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) - and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the tip of Emanuel's previously undisclosed ethics problems.

One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro's husband. But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel's days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

Emanuel is a multimillionaire, but lived for the last five years for free in the tony Capitol Hill townhouse owned by De Lauro and her husband, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg.

During that time, he also served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - which gave Greenberg huge polling contracts. It paid Greenberg's firm $239,996 in 2006 and $317,775 in 2008. (Emanuel's own campaign committee has also paid Greenberg more than $50,000 since 2004.)

To be fair, Greenberg had polling contracts with the DCCC before - but each new election cycle brings its own set of consultants. And Emanuel was certainly generous with his roommate.

Emanuel never declared the substantial gift of free rent on any of his financial-disclosure forms. He and De Lauro claim that it was just allowable "hospitality" between colleagues. Hospitality - for five years?

Some experts suggest that it was also taxable income: Over five years, the free rent could easily add up to more than $100,000.

Nor is this all that seems to have been missed in the Obama team's vetting process. Consider: Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board of directors during the time that the government-backed lender lied about its earnings, a leading contributor to the current economic meltdown.

The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out the Freddie Mac board as contributing to the fraud in 2000 and 2001 for "failing in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." In other words, board members ignored the red flags waving in their faces.

The SEC later fined Freddie $50 million for its deliberate fraud in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Meanwhile, Emanuel was paid more than $260,000 for his Freddie "service." Plus, after he resigned from the board to run for Congress in 2002, the troubled agency's PAC gave his campaign $25,000 - its largest single gift to a House candidate.

That's what friends are for, isn't it?

Now Rahm Emanuel is in the White House helping President Obama dig out of the mess that Freddie Mac helped start.

The president's chief of staff isn't subject to Senate confirmation, but his ethics still matter. Is this the change that we can depend on?

It is tempting to lay this at the feet of the fact that Emanuel crawled out of the same sewer of Illinois Democrat party machine politics as impeached governor Blagojevich and Obama himself. However this is a problem which is common to the entire Democrat party. After all Obama'a Treasury Secretary who refused to pay his income taxes for some years and lied on his returns in other years is not a Chicago native nor or any of the other Obama appointees who have had to withdraw their names because of tax or other ethical problems.

And Bill Clinton, the most corrupt president in US history, was not from Chicago (although the Little Rock/Hot Springs axis in Arkansas gives Cook County a run for its money). No, the reason why this kind of corruption and criminality is the rule in the Democrat party (unlike the Republican party where it exists but is the exception) flows from the mindset of the kind of person who is attracted to the Democrat party.

The average Democrat who seeks political power is, in his own mind, and elite who is better and smarter than the average citizen. Because the Democrat politician views him or herself as an elite they feel that the rules which apply to everyone else should not apply to them. Rank, after all, should have its privileges.

Democrats also tend to reject the authority of traditional religion-based morality. Observe the way in which his fellow Democrats rushed to defend Bill Clinton after he was caught committing adultery in the Oval Office or the way in which Democrats who claim to be Christian or observant Jews nevertheless still defend practices like abortion.

If you deny the authority of God and hold yourself above the laws of man then what exactly is there to restrain you? Nothing but the fear of legal consequences and public relations problems if you are caught.

And how much fear do those things still inspire? After all Bill Clinton committed perjury in federal court and his only "punishment" was having his law license temporarily suspended and a fine which he could pay with bribe money collected from Red Chinese spies. And he left office with a 60% approval rating despite the fact that both the adultery and the Red Chinese spies were common knowledge by that time.

In the bubble inhabited by the left-wing establishment (Democrat politicians, the mainstream media and academics) the judge of a politician's character is not to be found in how he behaves when no one is looking or in how he handles his own money or how he treats those over whom he personally wields power but in the public positions he takes on a shopping list of liberal litmus test issues. Issues such as abortion, the minimum wage and racial preferences.

Again I point to the example of Bill Clinton who was credibly accused of forcibly raping a woman and was still defended by feminists, one of which said that she would gladly suck him off to "thank him for keeping abortion legal" (she did not, however, indicate whether she would swallow).

In a world in which "virtue" is nothing more than publicly upholding a set of political positions then privately anything goes. Nancy Pelosi can support sweat shops in American Samoa, B. Hussein Obama can engage in corrupt land deals with a felonious Chicago developer and spend 20 years in a church whose pastor screams "God Damn America!" from the pulpit and preaches sermons about how the CIA created AIDS to exterminate black people and befriend an unrepentant communist terrorist bomber like Bill Ayers. Bill Clinton can rape and molest women and rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal contributions from hostile foreign governments and terror-supporting Arab potentates. Barny Frank can allow his "partner" to run a gay prostitution ring out of his apartment and Ted Kennedy can kill a young woman then attempt to bribe someone else to take the blame for it.

Elected Democrats can do all of this which ranges from disgusting hypocrisy to outright criminality and still be welcome in and be defended by their party because they want to "keep abortion legal". Is there anything so terrible that a Democrat, even one who supports abortion, can be expelled from that party? As a matter of fact there is. Joe Lieberman - supporter of partial birth abortion - was kicked out of the Democrat party for the monstrous crime of taking a principled stand in support of the war against Islamofascism.

So a Democrat will lose the support of his party if he comes out in favor of making war on people who do things like plan and execute the 9/11 attacks, stone homosexuals to death and behead or hang young girls for the "crime" of "allowing" themselves to be raped and thereby bringing shame upon their father and brothers. Provided that the war was begun under the leadership of a Republican president.

Of course a political party which offers unconditional support to any elected official who will simply support a particular legislative agenda and oppose anything supported by Republicans will be attractive not only to left-wing ideologues but to another class of people commonly known as sociopaths.

Which answers the oft asked question of "what the hell's wrong with that damned party anyway?" You fill a political party's leadership with people who are either true-believers who will do anything to further their ideological agenda or are sociopaths willing to do anything to further their personal agenda, neither of which believe that the rules which govern normal mortals apply to them, and you get exactly what you see running Washington today.

Another one bites the dust

WASHINGTON (AP) - Nancy Killefer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, has withdrawn her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government, the White House said Tuesday.

Killefer was the second major Obama administration nominee to withdraw and the third to have tax problems complicate their nomination after President Barack Obama announced their selection.

Democrat administrations are always going to have these problems because leftists think that the rules should apply to everyone except themselves. You see they're special because they care so much and they're so smart and they work so hard to grow government and limit average people's personal liberty (because ordinary people in flyover country really can't be trusted to make the proper decisions on their own).

Deja Vu

WASHINGTON (AP) - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday announced that he was withdrawing his nomination to be President-elect Barack Obama's commerce secretary amid a grand jury investigation into how some of his political donors won a lucrative state contract.

Richardson's withdrawal was the first disruption of Obama's Cabinet process and the second "pay-to-play" investigation that has touched Obama's transition to the presidency. The president-elect has remained above the fray in both the case of arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the New Mexico case.

Leftists desperately want to see the Obama presidency as a return of Camelot where they can recapture the magic and mystique of the Kennedy administration. However every day seems to bring more evidence that we are in for a rerun of the Clinton years.

Maybe this is simply the best the Democrat party can do nowadays. After all if JFK were in politics today he would be a Republican neo-conservative. He campaigned against Nixon by claiming that the Eisenhower administration had let the US fall behind the USSR in strategic weapons. He cut the top marginal income tax rate dramatically in order to stimulate economic activity. He created the US Army Special Forces (Green Berets). He promised to help any friend and fight any foe in defense of liberty. He deployed troops to Vietnam to fight the communists. The budgets he submitted to congress had 60% of their spending on defense and 40% on domestic programs (as opposed to Ronald Reagan's budgets which spent 60% on domestic programs and 40% on defense). He placed an economic embargo on Cuba in an attempt to starve out the communist regime of Fidel Castro. He faced down the Soviet Union over their stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba.

When you think about it there are really only two things which tie Jack Kennedy to the modern Democrat party. One was his almost unbelievably massive appetite for adulterous affairs, which unites him with Bill Clinton. The other was the fact that he only got elected through voter fraud committed by the Daley machine in Chicago. This puts him squarely in the camp of Barack Obama and Al Franken (and Al Gore, remember he at least tried to steal Florida).

To be fair Democrats aren't the only people to this sort of thing. Republicans like to call themselves "The Party of Lincoln" even though Lincoln's political philosophy was far down the road to socialism. In fact Lincoln was so far down that road that Karl Marx wanted to dedicate an English translation of The Communist Manifesto to Lincoln. Surviving correspondence between the two men reveals that Lincoln demurred only because Marx's atheism would have offended American voters.

The GOP also likes to wrap itself in the mantel of Teddy Roosevelt however his political philosophy was that the Constitution ought not stand in the way of the people getting the legislation that they want and need. And there was also the small matter of him being certifiably insane (however, I still love The Wind and the Lion).

Cry me a fraking river

CINCINNATI – An Ohio agency director resigned Wednesday in the wake of a finding that she improperly used state computers to access personal information on the man who became known as "Joe the Plumber" during the presidential campaign.

Two other officials who were suspended from their positions for their role in the computer search will not be returning to their jobs, an agency spokeswoman said.

Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley said in a statement accompanying her resignation that she won't allow her reputation to be disparaged and that she is concerned for her family's safety.

This woman abused her authority in allowing a fishing expedition through the private information of a private citizen because he dared to stand up and ask a real question of a political candidate.

This is an actual crime and she ought to do some time in the Ohio state womens' prison but she will escape justice and is being allowed to frame her departure in disgrace as though she were reluctantly being forced to leave in order to protect her family from the death threats of the evil right-wing hit machine.

Ever notice how when members of the Party of Grotesque Corruption get caught they always start crying like sniveling little girls about the death threats they supposedly get? What's next, will she claim to find a noose tied to her doorknob?

I'll say it again. This woman should be sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial. The fact that she is not is a perversion of justice and she should just shut up and be glad that she's not going to spend the next few years showering in groups.

The first of many upcoming Clinton flashbacks

WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama hasn't even stepped into office and already a scandal is threatening to dog him.

Obama isn't accused of anything. But the fact that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a fellow Democrat, has been charged with trying to sell Obama's now-vacant Senate post gives political opponents an opening to try to link him to the scandal. A slew of questions remain. The investigation is still under way. And the ultimate impact on Obama is far from certain.

He pointedly distanced himself from the case Tuesday, saying, "I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so I was not aware of what was happening" concerning any possible dealing about Blagojevich's appointment of a successor.

Asked what contact he'd had with the governor's office about his replacement in the Senate, President-elect Obama today said "I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening."


Except that the little messiah's campaign manager, David Axelrod, told a different story - back before they knew that Blagojevich was about to be indicted. This from ABC News:

But on November 23, 2008, his senior adviser David Axelrod appeared on Fox News Chicago and said something quite different.

While insisting that the President-elect had not expressed a favorite to replace him, and his inclination was to avoid being a "kingmaker," Axelrod said, "I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."

Of course now that it is at least embarrassing and possibly criminal to admit that you were taking part in the great Illinois Senate Auction of 2008 Axelrod has changed his story and said that he "misspoke".

The mainstream media is circling the wagons around the little messiah and are doing everything humanly possible to cement in the public's mind that "there is no evidence linking Obama to the scandal". However they are deliberately ignoring the extremely precise wording of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's statement in which he said that this indictment contained no accusations against the president-elect and that he couldn't say more at this time.

Clearly Mr. Fitzgerlad if leaving his options open as to what Mr. Obama might be charged with in the future.

Those who have predicted that an Obama presidency will be like a third term for Bill Clinton may be more right than they could have suspected.

Illinois Governor arrested, it's about damn time

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Full release from U.S. Attorney's Office:

Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and his Chief of Staff, John Harris, were arrested today by FBI agents on federal corruption charges alleging that they and others are engaging in ongoing criminal activity: conspiring to obtain personal financial benefits for Blagojevich by leveraging his sole authority to appoint a United States Senator; threatening to withhold substantial state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members sharply critical of Blagojevich; and to obtain campaign contributions in exchange for official actions – both historically and now in a push before a new state ethics law takes effect January 1, 2009.

In other words typical Chicago/Illinois type politics. And it is from this sewer that our esteemed [cough] president-elect, none other than the little messiah himself - B. Hussein Obama, crawled.

And the stink of that corruption surrounds Hussein, it hovers around him like the stench of rotting garbage and taints everything with which he comes in contact.

The reason that his fellow Democrats didn't notice during the campaign was that their sense of smell was burned out by the stink of political purification which filled Washington during the eight years of the Clinton administration.

I could spin a wonderful fantasy about Obama stretching out his hand to put it on the Bible or Koran or whatever at his inauguration only to have an FBI agent snap a pair of handcuffs on it because a fearless US Attorney had followed the trail all the way back to the little messiah, but I won't.

One, because it will never happen. It's not that Obama isn't a criminal and doesn't deserve to go to jail, he does. An honest man or woman simply cannot be elected to office in Chicago today any more than a black woman could have been elected President of the United States in 1830. Sorry if anyone doesn't like the sound of that but it is absolutely and undeniably true.

Two, because if it did it would leave us with President Joe Biden and the less said about that the better.

I told you so

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election. A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press on Thursday.

A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.

Like I said there is enough information out there to justify prosecuting ACORN under the RICO statutes.

Let us hope that everyone involved with their fraudulent voter registration efforts, up to and including B. Hussein Obama, becomes very familiar with our nation's federal prison system.

If the market is allowed to work it will sort things out

James Calhoun offers some badly needed perspective:

Last week Goldman Sachs raised $10 billion in new capital in one day. They sold $5 billion in preferred stock and warrants to Berkshire Hathaway and also completed a secondary offering of common stock that raised another $5 billion. Friday, JP Morgan raised $10 billion in a secondary offering to help pay for the Washington Mutual takeunder. Both of these offerings were oversubscribed, meaning that the companies could have raised more capital if they wanted. There is not a shortage of capital for well run financial companies. There is, however, a shortage of capital for companies that have acted irresponsibly with investor capital in the recent past. For some reason, our political leaders believe this is a failure of the market, but isn’t this what should be expected from rational investors? ...

The biggest bank failure in the history of the United States happened last Thursday night and by Friday morning, it was business as usual. The only difference was the name on the door and the losses suffered by those unfortunate enough to invest in Washington Mutual bonds or stock. The taxpayers didn’t lose anything and depositors didn’t lose anything, only investors. That is how capitalism works in case everyone has forgotten.

In a free market situations like this are dealt with by badly run businesses going under and their assets being taken over by better run businesses. Bad debt is written off, investors take a hit (investors reap the largest rewards of success but they assume the risk and sometimes lose their money if you can't deal with that don't invest) and the economy begins to grow again.

This 700 billion (which will quickly swell to at least a trillion) dollar bailout was a gigantic ream job which the left (Treasury Secretary Paulson is a liberal Democrat) was attempting to foist on the American taxpayers. The propose of the bailout was to generate a huge pile of cash which congressional liberals could divert to their buddies (like B. Hussein Obama's associates at ACORN) knowing that a substantial cut would be returned to them as campaign contributions and that these entities would have lucrative jobs waiting for Democrats retiring from "public service".

Equally important, to the left, was the fact that the bailout would have moved the federal government into the nation's financial markets in a way which has never been done before. This move would have represented a government takeover of a significant part of the American economy almost on a par with Hillary Clinton's attempt to bring about socialized medicine in the 90's.

The failure of this "deal" is a good thing. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron puts it this way:

This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

[. . .]

Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.

So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

It is time NOW just weeks before a presidential election for the American public to take a long hard look at exactly who caused this mess and exactly what needs to be done to fix it.

As Mr. Miron said the answer to bad government is not more government.

More on who to blame

Here is another video of a congressional hearing in which Republican after Republican warns of a serious problem and Democrat after Democrat denies that anything is wrong and implies that the only reason to question the status quo is racism.


Want to know who to blame for this whole mess? You need look no further than the Democrat party.

Now they want us to give them the White House.

NO WAY IN HELL!