November 20, 2008
Judge for yourself … but this interview is very revealing
FALSANI: Do you believe in heaven?
OBAMA: Do I believe in the harps and clouds and wings?
FALSANI: A place spiritually you go to after you die?
OBAMA: What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.
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November 20, 2008
That didn’t take long.
As we observed throughout the campaign, Barack Obama gave indications that his election would mean a return to the September 10 mentality, a national-security outlook marked prominently by its lack of seriousness about the terrorist threat. In choosing Eric Holder to be his attorney general, President-Elect Obama has taken a step toward confirming those misgivings.
Holder was the Clinton administration’s last deputy attorney general, succeeding Jamie Gorelick in 1997 under Janet Reno. That appointment marked the final elevation in a series of Clinton-era promotions that punctuate his résumé. Holder’s rise, like Obama’s own, is of symbolic significance, as he now has been nominated to be the nation’s first black attorney general. Symbolism, however, cannot camouflage the fact that Holder is a conventional, check-the-boxes creature of the Left.
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November 20, 2008
Chelsea Clinton greets local residents during a campaign stop with her mother, Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007.
I may have to resort to the bottle to survive another Clinton dynasty.
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November 20, 2008
India praised for sinking pirates
An anti-piracy watchdog has welcomed the destruction of a suspected Somali pirate vessel in the Gulf of Aden by an Indian navy warship.
INS Tabar sank the pirate “mother ship” after it did not stop for investigation and instead opened fire, an Indian navy statement said on Wednesday.
There has been a surge in piracy incidents off the coast of Somalia.
“If all warships do this, it will be a strong deterrent. But if it’s just a rare case, then it won’t work,” Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, told Associated Press.
Mr Choong said he was heartened by the Tabar’s success.
“It’s about time that such a forceful action is taken. It’s an action that everybody is waiting for,” he said.
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November 19, 2008
The Bank Terrorist
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY
Housing: For years, a self-described “bank terrorist” blackmailed banks into making bad home loans in our inner cities. Now those loans are defaulting by the millions, and he’s blaming banks.
Activist Bruce Marks, speaking in February at a housing conference, has a history of terrorizing banks until they make questionable home loans.
Last month, he and about 100 urban protesters stormed Fannie Mae’s headquarters, demanding it stop foreclosures on subprime houses — the same homes his group pressured Fannie to fund.
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November 19, 2008
Let Detroit Go Bankrupt
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
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November 19, 2008
Clinton May Need to Pay Off Debt Before Taking Post
Hillary Clinton will face a financial decision if she is nominated as secretary of state: what to do about the more than $7 million in debts left over from her presidential campaign.
She could pay off the bulk of her debt by liquidating her Senate campaign committee account. She also could legally continue to raise money, though that may present ethical concerns if she is serving in the Cabinet.
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November 17, 2008
There was only one thing that bothered Eisman, and it continued to trouble him as late as May 2007. “The thing we couldn’t figure out is: It’s so obvious. Why hasn’t everyone else figured out that the machine is done?”
The End
by Michael Lewis
The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.
I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people’s money, would be expelled from finance.
More generally, the subprime market tapped a tranche of the American public that did not typically have anything to do with Wall Street. Lenders were making loans to people who, based on their credit ratings, were less creditworthy than 71 percent of the population. Eisman knew some of these people. One day, his housekeeper, a South American woman, told him that she was planning to buy a townhouse in Queens. “The price was absurd, and they were giving her a low-down-payment option-ARM,” says Eisman, who talked her into taking out a conventional fixed-rate mortgage. Next, the baby nurse he’d hired back in 1997 to take care of his newborn twin daughters phoned him. “She was this lovely woman from Jamaica,” he says. “One day she calls me and says she and her sister own five townhouses in Queens. I said, ‘How did that happen?’ ” It happened because after they bought the first one and its value rose, the lenders came and suggested they refinance and take out $250,000, which they used to buy another one. Then the price of that one rose too, and they repeated the experiment. “By the time they were done,” Eisman says, “they owned five of them, the market was falling, and they couldn’t make any of the payments.”
YOU MUST READ THE REST!
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November 17, 2008
The Center-Right Myth
We have been hearing pundits saying this is a center-right country on television for the last couple of weeks, despite all available evidence (check out this video for a sample). Newsweek even did a whole cover story on it. CNN even did a poll a week after the election to ask people if they wanted the country to head in a Democratic direction. We already had that poll — it was called Election Day!
Thank Mr. Dunderhead for convincing us that ONLY 3% of the American population has spoken for the entire country. That’s the point difference between the number of people who voted for Obama versus McCain. Now get your calculator back out and do the math! You do NOT get to use that factor to overlay the thoughts of the public at large. Besides, it doesn’t NEARLY account for the positions that President elect Obama ran on in the first place. It was absolutely necessary to include those “right of center” folks in his rhetoric to make sure he would be getting their vote, come election day. So please … reign in your ignorance.
This is typical of the intellectual bankruptcy at the Huffington Post.
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November 17, 2008
AIG to Pay Millions To Top Workers
American International Group plans to pay out $503 million in deferred compensation to some of its top employees, saying it must tap the funds to keep valuable workers from exiting the troubled insurance giant.
News of the payments to top AIG talent comes as the federal government has just put more money into saving the company from bankruptcy, beefing up the total public commitment to $152 billion. Meanwhile, members of Congress are questioning the company’s expenditures — including lavish business trips to resorts — during a time when taxpayers are on the hook for the bailout.
Is it just me or have legislators lost their minds!
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November 17, 2008
You may want to take a few tablespoons of THIS before reading any further.
Staff cuts accelerate; no Christmas party at Time, Inc.
The cutbacks at Time Inc. are starting to claim more senior people on the business side at the same time that the editorial cuts accelerate.
And in a move likely to surprise no one, Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore has … decided to fire up to 600 people - and skip the (Christmas) party altogether.
Bust finally reaches technology industry
The technology industry, which resisted the global economy’s growing weakness over the last year as customers kept buying laptops and iPhones, has finally succumbed to the slowdown.
In the span of just a few weeks, orders for both business and consumer technology products have collapsed, and technology companies have begun laying off workers. The plunge is so severe that some executives are comparing it with the dot-com bust in 2001, when hundreds of companies disappeared and Silicon Valley lost nearly one-fifth of its jobs.
Citigroup to cut 10 percent of jobs: source
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C - News) plans to shed about 10 percent of its global workforce, a person familiar with the matter said Friday, as the bank tries to return to profitability and faces mounting criticism of Chief Executive Vikram Pandit.
The cuts could result in a loss of roughly 35,000 jobs, based on the bank’s reported 352,000-person workforce as of Sept 30. The cuts will be on top of the 23,000 jobs Citigroup has already slashed this year.
Pakistan to Request Billion Dollar Loan from the IMF
After weeks of trying to secure a financial lifeline from its allies, Pakistan is finally turning to the International Monetary Fund to stave off an economic collapse, with a senior official saying Saturday that the nation has reached an agreement with the international lending agency and will formally request a $7.6 billion financial stabilization package.
U.S. Economy: Retail Sales Drop by Most on Record
Retail sales and prices of goods imported to the U.S. dropped by the most on record, signaling the economy may be in its worst slump in decades.
Global Financial Crisis May Fuel Instability and Weaken U.S. Defenses
Intelligence officials are warning that the deepening global financial crisis could weaken fragile governments in the world’s most dangerous areas and undermine the ability of the United States and its allies to respond to a new wave of security threats.
Largest Post Election Stock Market Sell Off in History
The selloff started immediately after Obama’s election.
Across nation, gay advocates protest marriage ban
Gay rights supporters waving rainbow colors marched, chanted and danced in cities coast to coast Saturday to protest the vote that banned gay marriage in California and to urge supporters not to quit the fight for the right to wed.
Barack Obama is warned to beware of a ‘huge threat’ from al-Qaeda
Barack Obama is being given ominous advice from leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to brace himself for an early assault from terrorists.
More Americans slipping into bankruptcy
The deep troubles of the U.S. economy are pushing a growing number of already struggling Americans into bankruptcy, often with far more debt than those who filed in previous downturns.
Facing Deficits, States Get Out Sharper Knives
Two short months ago lawmakers in California struggled to close a $15 billion hole in the state budget. It was among the biggest deficits in state history. Now the state faces an additional $11 billion shortfall and may be unable to pay its bills this spring.
U.S. Recession to Extend Into 2009, Business Economists Say
The U.S. has entered a recession that will persist into next year, and economies around the world will follow suit, according to a survey of business economists.
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November 15, 2008
Saudi Arabia to lead UN talks on religious tolerance
Saudi Arabia, which deploys a special police force to ensure that only one narrow sect of Islam predominates in the kingdom, is sponsoring a discussion at the United Nations on religious tolerance starting Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia and religious tolerance in the same sentence? Who thinks up these crazy ideas anyway. Oh wait … the United Nations.
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November 15, 2008
Husband’s foreign deals may pose issue for Clinton
Former President Bill Clinton’s globe-trotting business deals and fundraising for his foundation sometimes put his activities abroad at odds with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and could cause complications if President-elect Barack Obama picks her to be secretary of state.
This was merely a “courtesy” meeting … don’t be looking for Hillary as the pick for Sec/State.
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November 15, 2008
Government rebates would do less harm than a bailout.
Should Uncle Sam save General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from bankruptcy? In normal times, most mainstream economists (and many mainstream legislators) would probably say no. But with financial markets in turmoil and the economy on the cusp of a nasty recession, these are hardly normal times. In any event, Congress and President-elect Barack Obama are committed to spending billions to keep the Big Three afloat.
What’s not been decided, however, is how that money should be spent. A radical change in perspective could spare the nation a lot of grief down the road. Rather than subsidizing the auto makers directly (and almost certainly sucking Washington into their management), why not give Americans the financial incentive to accelerate purchases of cars and light trucks? The consumer-subsidy approach would be a less wasteful route to the desired end, as well as one that would leave a less toxic legacy of market intervention once the economy has recovered.
Well that just makes too much sense! Put spending incentives into the hands of the public? Whoever heard of such a thing. We ALL know the answer to America’s problems is to keep the solutions inside of bureaucratic control so they can effectively politically solve all our problems.
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November 15, 2008
Peers call 8th grader ’stupid,’ say she should be ‘killed’ for supporting Republican
When a 14-year-old girl wore a “McCain girl” T-shirt to school, students told her she should be “crucified” or “burned” for supporting the Republican – but when she wore an Obama T-shirt, everyone complimented her.
Illinois 8th grader Catherine Vogt’s mother supported Obama, while her father supported McCain. The teen conducted an experiment to test tolerance among her peers and teachers, the Chicago Tribune reported. But she was surprised by their strong reactions.
Vogt began the experiment by wearing a white T-shirt with “McCain girl” painted in red across the front to Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School in Oak Park. She wrote her observations in a journal.
Yet another example from the “Can’t we all just get along” archives.
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November 15, 2008
“Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside.”
This essay is only about William Ayers’ past and present political views. It is not about the connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers. That issue has been covered (and continues to be covered) elsewhere in innumerable news reports and blog postings. Yet as evidence mounts of the extensive and long-standing connection between Obama and Ayers, making their association more and more difficult to deny, Obama’s campaign and supporters have started shifting their strategy; Sure, they say, Obama may have had a connection with Ayers, but why is that so bad? Look at William Ayers now: He’s a completely respectable man. What — he protested against the Vietnam War? So did everyone. He’s no extremist. I see these arguments made in countless blog posts, comment sections, and even news articles. This essay exists to stop that political escape route. There’s no getting around it: William Ayers was a violent communist revolutionary bent on overthrowing the government and “seizing power” in the United States. The proof is on this page. And the only difference between the 1970s William Ayers and the William Ayers with whom Barack Obama has associated is that Ayers no longer uses violence to achieve his goals. But Ayers’ underlying political world-view (i.e. communism) has remained the same.
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