A blast from the past

The following appeared in the liberal bastion of journalistic integrity, The New York Times on September 30, 1999. That's right. Nine years ago, exactly the point where you can trace the roots of the mortgage crisis, although this article demonstrates a better understanding of the crisis than you will find in today's New York Times.

Democrats have tried to blame the failing financial sector on "free markets" and capitalism, and lack of government regulation and oversight. But what if banks were making risky sub-prime loans not as a result of a lack of government restraint, but because of a policy of intentional government involvement carried out by two government-chartered organizations which dominate the market?

FANNIE MAE EASES CREDIT TO AID MORTGAGE LENDING

By STEVEN A. HOLMES

Published in the New York Times on September 30, 1999.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Meet the best friend of Obama bin Biden.

What $700 billion could do

I thought it might be a good plan to think of better things we could do with the $700 billion burning a hole in the pocket of the Treasury Department. Ignore for a moment the fact that they don't HAVE $700 billion and is in fact TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. But what's ten percent more debt when you have no plan to ever pay off the debt you already have?

When I look at New England, I have just one thought: pavement.

With pavement running at $4 per yard for large jobs (and none was ever larger than this one) we could pave a square mile for $12.4 million. $700 billion would cover 56,451 square miles.

That would be Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersy, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. I'm guessing we could get them to throw in DC for free, considering the size of the job (in addition to the tax right-off for civic service).

Alternatively, we could just pave the entire state of Illinois. Consider it the biggest earmark BO ever brought home.

Another bright idea I had was to buy 700 billion "Scratchers" tickets. That way we at least have pretty good odds of getting SOMETHING back for our money. The obvious disadvantage is the problem of finding enough coins to scratch them, and then trying to get rid of all that silver gunk you scratch off each ticket.

The latest version of the bailout bill has some added perks like tax cuts. If you want to cut taxes, that's great. Write a tax cut bill and I'll call my Congresscritters to ask them to support it. But to coin a phrase, if you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.

Objective media?

If you are ever wondering if the media really is "in the tank" for BO, consider this:

Gwen Ifill, the moderator of Thursday night's VP debate, is now releasing a Pro-BO book, breathlessly titled The Breakthrough. I don't know how you can be pro-BO when everyone knows that BO STINKS, but that's our media.

Nothing is Sound

On Thursday I am going to the "Music Builds" tour with my son. I've been looking forward to this Concert for months.

The concert features Third Day, which is the band most responsible for revolutionizing the worship music genre. They have a classic southern-rock type of sound which reminds me of the Eagles or Lynyrd Skinard. That's not the style I usually prefer, but they have a few songs I really like, such as "Show me your glory."

Also appearing is Jars of Clay, the alternative band which released one of the best albums ever clear back in 1995, featuring remarkable songs like Flood and Love Song for a Savior. I stopped following them when their second album stunk. Turns out I should not have given up on them so soon. Their 2002 album "The Eleventh Hour" was exceptional including a wide variety of songs ranging from the rocking "Revolution" to the deeply pensive "Edge of Water." "Redemption Songs" was a one of the most unique and inventive worship albums ever, featuring modern recordings of ancient hymns. Their recent song "Dead Man" is easily as good as anything on their first album.

But the band that I am most excited to see is Switchfoot, a newcomer compared to the others. Switchfoot arrived on the national scene on 2003 with their amazing album "The Beautiful Letdown." "Meant to Live" is one great song from this album, but there are really too many to list them all. If you want my recommendation for one album to buy, this is it. Their rise to fame brought new attention to their independently produced song "Dare you to Move", a great song in spite of the obviously low-budget video. Their next album, Nothing is Sound included the big hit "Stars". But the real gem on this album is "Happy is a Yuppie Word", a song which sums up why I love Switchfoot. The idea behind this song came from an interview of Bob Dylan on his fiftieth birthday. He was asked if he was "happy". Dylan answered "You know, these are yuppie words: happiness, unhappiness. It is not happiness or unhappiness, it is blessed or unblessed." That idea is combined in a very unlikely way with themes from Ecclesiastes. Now Bob Dylan and Solomon have nothing at all in common, but the song works amazingly well. Listen to it and get lost in the lyrics. Once you get to know this song you can't avoid being swept away by the refrain "Nothing is sound" as the song reaches its climax. This rings particularly true today as the financial markets crumble. Switchfoot's most recent CD, "Oh, Gravity" included some hit songs such as "American dream" and the title track (I love the completely unexpected transition into the second verse). However, my favorite is the much-overlooked "In this life" with one of my favorite lines in any song: "You're everything that's fair in love and war." The song builds to a passionate apex where Jon howls "In this life you're my only one" a heart-felt cry to God which in my opinion is the high-point of the album.

Each of these three bands has enough top-quality material to make a great show. Put them all together and it will be an unforgettable night of music.

A fine day

I woke up this morning, and entirely without the assistance of Congress, the sun rose, pouring light and warmth down upon us. The birds sang, the breeze blew, and all was well. I flipped the light switch and the light came on. There was food in the kitchen and gas in the tank of my car. I turned the key in the ignition, and the engine started. I pushed the accelerator petal and the car moved.

Based on the panicked frenzy of the talking heads on TV you would think that the world was coming to an end. Congress didn't sweep in and save us. What are we to do? Well, I've got a news flash for the media: America will survive this. We've pulled through much worse than this and come out stronger for it.

Yesterday's vote was not a failure of leadership. Instead, yesterday was a fine day to be an American, because for once, Congress heard the voice of the people and refused to pass a bad bill in the face of pressure from all sides to ram it through.

But what about the 778 point plummet of the stock market. Believe me, I am aware of that. Yesterday was the first time in my life that I lost $20k in one day. But today I am smiling regardless. My loss yesterday was on paper, and I am not selling. The market will recover. The plunge was a good thing. After all, the stock market is a barometer of the emotional state of the top echelon of business and finance -- the very people who were key players in creating this crisis. They should be shell-shocked. The bet the farm and lost, and yesterday the thought registered that Congress might not ride to their rescue. They hoped that the taxpayers would be compelled to cover their loss, but the taxpayers spoke up and 218 courageous members of Congress heard.

Citizens getting informed and putting their foot down is generally a very good thing. It prevented Nancy Pelosi from sneaking in a provision to funnel money from the bailout to wacko leftist groups including ACORN, a fringe group built on tactics from Saul Alinsky. BO was a trainer for ACORN in Chicago, where he employed methods from Alinksy’s book Rules for Radicals, a manual for the overthrow of the US Government. ACORN members trained by BO used Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act to shake down banks, forcing them to make risky loans under threat of lawsuits. ACORN was a major player in the push to lower lending standards, which is what created the mortgage crisis in the first place. Today ACORN is in trouble in a number of states for voter fraud. When the public became aware that Pelosi was using this bailout bill to channel money to ACORN, she sheepishly removed the provision, but her cover was already blown. It was now apparent that she was not laying aside partisan politics for the good of the country, as she claimed.

But we need to do more than just avoid channeling taxpayer money to far left groups responsible for the crisis we are trying to escape from. We need criminal investigations of Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd who accepted $166,000 in contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while assuring that Congress would ignore their fraudulent accounting scheme. We need to investigate Barney Frank who said these institutions were fundamentally sound, and should be more aggressive in getting loans to low-income people. And we need to prosecute Obama advisors Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, and Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick and Rahm Emanuel, who received tens of millions of dollars in bonuses from Fannie and Freddie while they cooked the books and steered the ship straight into the iceberg.

Yesterday’s victory proves that Congress will listen if we shout loudly enough. Now it is time to demand the things which must be in the bill. If taxpayers are to buy out the bad loans, it must be at a large enough discount to make it a reasonable investment, likely to return a profit commensurate with the risk being assumed. The people listed above who broke the law while creating this crisis must be prosecuted. Fannie and Freddie should be privatized so that they will no longer be subject to government meddling. Laws which force lenders to make unsound loans must be repealed. Corporate tax rates must be reduced to keep America competitive in the global marketplace. Finally, “mark-to-market” accounting should be waived.

So don’t buy into the fear mongering. Yesterday’s vote means that there is still time to do this thing right by fixing what is broken rather than simply buying off the consequences of the criminally irresponsible actions of the mortgage lenders and the government institutions which encouraged making bad loans.

What to do instead

I made the case a couple of days ago that we should not use taxpayer money to nationalize the failing finance companies, and in spite of the fact that President Bush and both candidates for President support that $700 billion bailout, I remain convinced that it would be a huge mistake.

This is a government-created crisis, and turning to government to prop up the corrupt government-chartered structure is just more of the wrong-headed thinking that got us here in the first place. So what should we do?

The Republican Study Committee has a proposal which is worthy of consideration from those of us who believe in free markets rather than government control as the most effective way to build and grow a sound economy. It is rare to find someone in Congress who gets it, so I want to give credit to the few remaining conservatives. This letter from the RSC to the Bush Administration nails the case against the huge power grab.

The RSC outlines a pro-growth agenda to get the economy moving by getting government out of the way, instead of simply throwing our money at the problem. Here are the major points of their plan:

1. Give the capital-gains tax a two-year vacation. “Suspending capital gains taxes would bring as much as a trillion dollars of capital sitting on the sidelines back into the market,” Hensarling predicts. Also, as the Tax Foundation proposes, cutting America’s 35-percent corporate tax — the industrialized world’s second highest, after Japan’s — would boost U.S. global competitiveness. Since equity prices partially reflect long-term after-tax profits, lowering corporate levies should buoy stock markets.

2. Denationalize, then privatize Fannie and Freddie. “These troubled financial Frankensteins — created in a government laboratory — are not creatures of the free enterprise system,” Hensarling said. “We must ultimately take their monopoly powers away and return them to the marketplace” by auctioning off their loans.

3. Waive “mark-to-market” accounting. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s John Berlau argues, when distressed mortgage-backed securities sell at bargain-basement prices, unhelpful new bookkeeping regulations require that similar instruments elsewhere — including viable loans — be valued at equally low prices. This needlessly stains balance sheets.

4. Strengthen the dollar. Bernanke should boost U.S. currency, not pose as America’s uber-stock broker. A strong dollar lowers inflation, cheapens oil, and soothes world markets.

Let the White House and your Congresscritter know that you support the RSC position.

Stand up for Joe

We've all seen the email saying that Joe Biden is going to drop out of the race after the VP debate, and be replaced by Hillary. While anything is possible, I don't have any reason to believe that whoever originated this email has any special inside information. I am certain that BO is kicking himself for picking Biden, and Joe himself says that Hillary would have been a better pick, but at this point BO is pretty much stuck with the bumbling but lovable guy. And that is fine with me. While Sarah Palin is propelling the McCain/Palin ticket, Biden is dragging down "Barack America". When I hear the verbal train wreck that is Joe Biden, one word comes to mind: terrible. McCain doesn't have to go on the attack -- just wait for Biden to open his mouth and switch feet, a move he learned as President during the First World War.

So let's stand up for Joe Biden.

Let them fail

Unless you are living in a lead-lined cave you have heard the reports on the coming end of the world. By this time next week, civilization will have collapsed and we will all be bartering for water, food, and handgun ammunition as we struggle to stay alive. We are in the midst of the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression. In fact, this one might be worse! Forget the Savings and Loan collapse, the stock market crash of 1987, and the dismal 1970’s. This one dwarfs them all.

Well, not really, but it does sell newspapers, and we all know that newspapers need to do something to increase their readership before they become completely irrelevant. Doom and gloom is also a useful tool for the media, which is completely in the tank for BO.

While there has been considerable hyperbole from a media more concerned with sensationalism than responsible reporting, and many are seizing on the events to further their own political agenda, there is a real problem which has been years in the making. It deserves our attention to understand how we got here, what we should do at this point, and what we can learn for the future.

With a crucial election 42 days away, the political blame game is in full swing.

I could make a pretty good case that the roots of the problem go back to Jimmy Carter’s programs, primarily the “Community Reinvestment Act,” to encourage home ownership by pressuring mortgage companies to lower their lending standards for lower income people who would not otherwise qualify for a loan.

Clinton expanded those programs in 1994, and Alan Greenspan’s policy encouraged further reducing the lending standards, resulting in mortgage companies lending billions of dollars to people who didn’t have the financial means to repay the loans. By this time, not all of them were lower income. Instead of letting mortgage brokers decide who to lend money to, and what rates to charge, the government stepped in with their VHA loans and government-chartered organizations run by former top Clinton White House officials. These government intrusions were the driving force behind the sub-prime lending spree, where millions of loans were made to people without documenting their ability to pay the loans back.

I’m sure you heard the advertisements for loans with no money down, no income verification, and no credit check. “You can buy a house with no money down one day after filing for bankruptcy!”

Many people took out adjustable rate mortgages when interest rates were at historic lows, leaving no direction for their payments to adjust other than up. There is no justification for that kind of foolishness, but people did it because of the teaser rates which permitted them to buy a much more expensive house than they could afford.

No money down, interest only loans also flourished. In this kind of loan, you never gain any equity, unless the value of the house increases. If the value of the house decreases, the homeowner is in a slippery, slimy hole, where selling the house would not generate enough money to pay off the loan.

Safeguards such as 20% down payments, qualifying ratios, credit requirements, and income documentation protect the buyer from being forced into default and foreclosure, and they protect the lenders from loosing their principal. These safeguards were thrown to the wind, both to meet government mandates on lending fairness and based on pure greed. With real estate prices soaring, everyone wanted in on the game, and the loans didn’t look risky as long as interest rates stayed low and real estate values kept going up.

Government organizations such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rated pools of sub-prime mortgages as AAA and sold them to money-market funds and Wall Street investment bankers.

The borrower had no skin in the game – they paid nothing down and had little or no equity at risk.

The broker had no skin in the game – they made the loan and sold it in a pool of other sub-prime loans rated as prime-quality low-risk paper.

The investment bankers who bought the pools were making money hand over fist, so they were not concerned about the actual quality of the loans.

With loads of money available to for loans at low interest rates, and with lenders willing to offer unrealistic “teaser” rates which allow people to qualify for a much bigger loan, people wanted more and more expensive houses, and the surge in demand drove prices way up, forming the self-sustaining real-estate bubble of the 2003-2006 period.

Near the end of 2006, the bubble popped.

Interest rates started to creep up. Adjustable rate mortgages started to adjust upwards. Real-estate prices started to fall, and buying houses no longer looked like a fail-safe ticket to riches. For the first time in years, there were more houses on the market than buyers to purchase them, and people stuck with a house they couldn’t afford were forced to sell at a loss to downsize to a house they could afford.

There were some feeble attempts to tighten up the standards and institute responsibility in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bush introduced several measures in 2003 which might have helped, but he didn’t push them hard enough to get them passed.

In 2005, Alan Greenspan warned of a coming crisis: “If Fannie and Freddie continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. “We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''

The Senate Banking Committee passed the first-ever reform bill for Fannie and Freddie. The bill would have required the companies to eliminate their investment in risky assets. It may have already been too late to avert disaster entirely, but it would have reduced the scope significantly. However, the bill did not become law. Senate Democrats voted the bill down in a party-line vote. Many of the senators who opposed reforming Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Chris Dodd, received huge campaign contributions from those institutions over the years. BO ranks second only to Dodd in lifetime contributions from Fannie and Freddie. Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman has raked in more than $165,000, while BO got $125,000. Clinton is the 12th ranked recipient, with $75,000. This profit found its way back to the Senators who killed the fix.

Clinton and Obama cronies, including Obama advisors Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, and Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick and Rahm Emanuel raked in huge bonuses while they cooked the books to create the illusion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sound, when in fact they were steering it directly towards collapse. All told, Clinton and Obama cronies looted Fannie and Freddie to the tune of over $100 million, money which the taxpayers will now be asked to cough up. To be completely clear, your money taken from you by the government is going to pay Clinton’s and Obama’s buddies for creating this crisis.

One footnote which is worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and election day: Senator John McCain was one of three cosponsors of S.190, the bill which would have attacked this problem before it got so completely out of control.

Today, the house of cards is collapsing and the results of the mortgage crisis are being felt in many other circles. Financial companies not directly in the mortgage business held mortgage securities that are now failing. These contracts, rated AAA by government regulators, and thus assumed to be safe investments, are now worthless or reduced to some fraction of their face value. This explains the wave of bank failures. AIG, an insurance company, was caught in a double-whammy. At the same time that they are facing billions of dollars in claims from two hurricanes, a significant portion of their assets have been rendered worthless, leaving them unable to pay their obligations.

Government tampering, under both parties, led to the current crisis. Today, politicians of both parties want more government tampering as a “solution” to the crisis. What they propose amounts to using our money to buy the failing loans which no one in their right mind would buy, and placing huge portions of the financial industry under government control. That is the wrong answer. We need to get government out of the way and let failing businesses fail. Bailing them out sends a really dangerous message. It encourages foolish risk-taking by assuring that businesses can reap the potential reward of excessive risk, but government will bear the cost of the down-side of that risk.

Think of it this way: you are offered the chance to flip a coin. If the toss comes up heads, you win $100,000. Tails costs you $200,000. Since you don’t have that kind of cash on hand, they will take your house, cars, bank accounts, retirement savings, and all of your property. That won’t quite cover it, so you and your entire family will become indentured slaves until the debt is paid. Sound good? No way! It is a foolish risk and you wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. Now imagine that if you loose, we’ll go out and force a bunch of people you don’t know to pay your debt. It still is a bad risk, but you no longer care so much about the downside, because it doesn’t affect you directly. You would be a lot more prone to accept the risk because you would benefit from the upside.

If we set the precedent that taxpayers will bail out businesses who take excessive risks, we can expect more of the same in the future. I understand that allowing these businesses to fail involves significant amounts of pain. But bailing them out is not pain-free either. It is simply a shell-game. When the government buys a bad loan, it doesn’t make it into a good loan. It simply makes it a bad loan that we, the taxpayers are responsible to cover, and moves the industry from the private sector with government tinkering to complete government control. A look at the history of centralized control of the economy indicates that government doesn’t do things better than the private sector, it does things worse. The solution is not to socialize the mortgage and financial industry, but to get rid of government intrusion, letting successful companies survive and flourish and unsuccessful companies fail. None of us should be happy to see hundreds of billions of our dollars used to prop up failing businesses in huge government power grabs. It is politically expedient to protect people from the pain of reckless risk-taking, but in the long term, the failure of poorly-run businesses is just as important as the success of well-run enterprises.

I say let Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman, Bear Sterns, and the rest of them fail, let the chips fall where they may, and get the government out of the way so that the industry can rebuild in a more sound way, recognizing that there are consequences for excessive risks.

There is no try

Just after watching the new Star Wars movie, "The Clone Wars" BO changed his slogan from "Change we can believe in" to the more direct appeal "Change we need."

Emerging from the movie, BO was heard to say, "Thinking I was. Change we need. Checks we also accept. Expensive campaigning is. Hmmmm? Yes. Expensive. Unfortunate to run before ready were we. Before complete was our training."

Washington DC math

After a tax cut, will your taxes be more or less than they were in the previous year?

It's a trick question, because if you use Washington DC math like BO does, the answer is not what you expect at all.

BO claims that he will cut taxes for all but the top 5% of taxpayers.

The reality is that all Americans will pay more under President BO.

BO's proposed "tax cuts" are illusions, but his tax increases are all very real. The "tax cuts" he proposes are to extend the Bush tax cuts and to eliminate the Alternate Minimum Tax.

Extending the Bush tax cuts (for those making less than $250k) is not a tax cut in the way most people would think of it. He is keeping taxes the same and calling it a cut. McCain has consistently been in favor of making the tax cuts permanent, but BO has voted against it every time. Bill Clinton campaigned on a promise of middle-class tax cuts, and then turned around and raised taxes on the middle class. Expect no different from BO.

The AMT was originally implemented to keep the super-wealthy from avoiding all taxes by using various loopholes. In the first year it applied to exactly 135 households. But because it is not indexed to inflation, year by year it has come to include more and more people. Today it would affect nearly 60 million people if it were applied as written. However, for years Congress has passed a year-by-year patch to the law to adjust it so that it still only applies to the wealthiest people. Obama says that he will eliminate the AMT, and counts that as a tax cut for all of the 60 million people it would affect without the yearly patch, even though hardly any of them have ever actually paid the AMT. Interestingly enough, last year BO voted against eliminating the AMT. I guess HE wanted to claim credit for that "tax cut" as President.

So BO is going to cut taxes that you are not paying anyway. Yay hurrah!

But his tax increases are 100% real money out of your pocket.

He wants to nearly double the capital gains tax from 15% to 28%. This is not a tax paid only by fat cats. If you own stock, it will impact you even if the stock is held in a tax sheltered account. If you own a home, it will impact you too. Investors, faced with the prospects of skyrocketing capital gains taxes, are sure to realize their capital gains before BO takes office, preferring a 15% rate to a 28% rate later on, leading to a major selloff, which will drive stock value down. The same market forces will make home ownership much less attractive and drive real estate values even further down. This proposed tax hike is truly disastrous for the economy.

BO also wants to hike taxes on dividends, a move which would further batter stock prices and drive capital out of the market. The hardest hit would be seniors who are dependent on dividends to provide their income.

As if that is not enough, BO plans to increase the payroll tax, a tax which impacts anyone who has a job. This sort of tax increase would destroy jobs and depress wages.

Even dying won't help you to avoid BO's tax increases. He plans to lower the ceiling for estate taxes to $1 million.

And then there is the real crowd-pleaser, the tax hike on those evil corporations. Who could oppose sticking it to them? After all, a corporate tax increase only impacts those who work for corporations or buy stuff from corporations.

Only Washington DC math could describe imaginary tax cuts and real tax increases as a "tax cut for 95% of taxpayers." Since his days as a Chicago Alinskyite, BO has a long track record of wealth redistribution, extorting from the productive to buy the support of the unproductive. The tax code is the single biggest source of power BO could possibly get his hands on, and given the opportunity, he will use it to expand his own power at your expense.

Kindergarten Condom

Last week John McCain released an ad attacking BO for his failure to do anything to improve education. The ad points out that his one and only accomplishment in this field is to support comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners.

Within moments of the ad’s appearance, the BO campaign called it “shameful and downright perverse.” The legislation in question, a bill in the Illinois State Senate that was supported but not sponsored by Obama, was, according to Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, “written to protect young children from sexual predators” and had nothing to do with comprehensive sex education for kindergartners. Daily Kos wackjobs were quick to jump on, calling the ad "racist" and "pro-pedophile."

If this claim from the BO camp was true, it would not mitigate the charge that BO failed to improve the dismal education provided by public schools in the primary topics they are responsible for teaching: math, English, science, history, geography, etc.

But the claim is not true.

The bill in question was Senate Bill 99, introduced in the Senate in February 2003. I encourage anyone interested in the facts about what BO supported to read the bill.

A press release announcing the introduction of the bill quoted the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Carol Ronen, as saying, “It teaches students about the advantages of abstinence, while also giving them the realistic information they need about the prevention of an unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.” The release contained no mention of sexual predators or inappropriate touching.

The bill appears to have three major purposes:

1. To mandate that information presented in sex-ed classes be “factual, medically accurate, and objective”. Fine.

2. To increase the number of children receiving sex education. To do this, it amended the existing law requiring the teaching of sex education, contraception, and AIDS prevention. The old law covered grades 6 through 12. That was amended to cover Kindergarten through twelfth grade.

3. To remove value-based language from the existing law. For instance, the following language was removed from the existing law:

Course material and instruction shall teach honor and respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage.
Course material and instruction shall stress that pupils should abstain from sexual intercourse until they are ready for marriage.
Classes shall emphasize that abstinence is the expected norm in that abstinence from sexual intercourse is the only protection that is 100 percent effective against unwanted teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

That language was replaced with the following:

Course material and instruction shall include a discussion of sexual abstinence as a method to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.
Course material and instruction shall present the latest medically factual information regarding both the possible side effects and health benefits of all forms of contraception, including the success and failure rates for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

Near the end of the bill there is one paragraph addressing inappropriate touching:

Course material and instruction shall teach pupils to not make unwanted physical and verbal sexual advances and how to say no to unwanted sexual advances and shall include information about verbal, physical, and visual sexual harassment, including without limitation nonconsensual sexual advances, nonconsensual physical sexual contact, and rape by an acquaintance. The course material and instruction shall contain methods of preventing sexual assault by an acquaintance, including exercising good judgment and avoiding behavior that impairs one’s judgment. The course material and instruction shall emphasize personal accountability and respect for others and shall also encourage youth to resist negative peer pressure. The course material and instruction shall inform pupils of the potential legal consequences of sexual assault by an acquaintance. Specifically, pupils shall be advised that it is unlawful to touch an intimate part of another person as specified in the Criminal Code of 1961.

But this paragraph is not the primary or central focus of the bill, as BO suggests.

In the wake of the recent controversy about this bill, Senator Martinez, one of the bills sponsors, was asked about the purpose of the bill:

I told Martinez that reading the bill, I just didn’t see it as being exclusively, or even mostly, about inappropriate touching. “I didn’t see it that way, either,” Martinez said. “It’s just more information about a whole variety of things that have to go into a sex education class, the things that are outdated that you want to amend with things that are much more current.”So, I asked, you didn’t see it specifically as being about inappropriate touching?“Absolutely not.”

Careful reading of the bill brings me to the conclusion that the bill is about much more than preventing inappropriate touching. It mandates that topics such as contraception and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases be taught to Kindergarteners in Illinois’ public schools. That is BO’s sole contribution to improving the education of Illinois’ kids. I wouldn’t be proud of it either.

Speaking for the whole world

Hollywood actor Matt Damon, who is more qualified than the rest of us to decide who ought to be President by merit of having appeared in movies, had the following to say about Sarah Palin.

I think there is a really good chance that Sarah Palin could president. And I think that's a really scary thing because I don't know anything about her. I don't think in eight weeks I'm going to know anything about her.

Matt, welcome to the information age. If you don't know anything about Sarah Palin it can only be because you have not taken advantage of the reams of news coverage and public records documenting Governor Palin's career.

I would like to know what you know about BO? No one else I have talked to can name one significant accomplishment from BO's career. They can't point me to an important bill he wrote and carried through the legislature to passage. They can't tell me what a community organizer actually DOES. So far all we know about BO is that he can beat Alan Keyes in Illinois.

Obama jumps the pig

Sarah Palin: Do you know the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick.

Barack Obama: You can put lipstick on a pig, and it's still a pig.

I've got a bridge to sell you

Check out this web site which computes "Your Obama tax cut."

Now before you get too excited, remember that a campaign promise is only as good as the person making it. Remember back to 1992 when Bill Clinton was running on a platform which included a "middle-class tax cut." Did you ever see it? Me neither. Just a few months after he took office, he announced that cutting taxes on the middle class was just not possible. Instead he pushed through the biggest middle-class tax increase in history.

In addition, recognize that BO has proposed tax increases in a number of other areas. He has said that he will increase the payroll tax, capital gains tax, interest income tax, death tax, and corporate tax rates. For those of you who like corporate taxes because you think that BO will really be sticking it to those big evil corporations, remember that corporate taxes are only paid by people who work for corporations, own stock in corporations, or buy things from corporations.

BO has proposed more than $335 billion in new spending annually. If we know anything about Democrats it is that their appetite for money is insatiable. All of the wonderful new programs which BO wants to inflict upon us will suck up all available money and preclude any tax cuts. Make no mistake, taxes will only go up with Obama in the White House.

Quarterly report

My brilliantly conceived business plan to match Exxon's $14 billion profit by selling bumper stickers on Zazzle.com is off to a slow start.

At 40 cents profit per bumper sticker, I need to sell 35 billion bumper stickers to catch up to Exxon. This means that every man, woman, and child on the planet must buy five.

Unfortunately, Exxon has a significant head start and a better developed base of customers. As of Monday September 8, I have sold 4 bumper stickers, generating $1.60 in revenue.

Some analysts have suggested that I have undermined my market by giving away more bumper stickers than I have sold, but I look at the practice as viral marketing, which in the long run is sure to result in more sales through word of mouth.

Others have questioned my strategy based on the observation that the Obama bin Biden ticket is due to be relegated to the ash-heap of history in roughly 56 days, leaving me a very short window of opportunity to reach my goal.

I address all of these very valid concerns with one response: diversification. Instead of just the one bumper sticker, you can now find t-shirts, various color schemes, and a few other designs. There are sure to be five items to appeal to every human on the planet. I hope Zazzle has the capacity to handle the coming flood of orders!

Chocolate New Orleans

In honor of New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and their new Republican Governor, Bob Jindal and their much improved handling of Gustov, I am reposting my recipe for a Chocolate New Orleans posted exclusively here on February 28, 2006. It appears that Nagin was concerned that another failure like Katrina, where he left hundreds of New Orleans school buses to be inundated by floodwater instead of using them to evacuate people in front of the storm, might result in voters telling him to "get your butt moving out of New Orleans right now".

1. Start off with a large brownie with chocolate chunks baked into it.
2. Apply a generous layer of chocolate mousse.
3. Add a second brownie.
4. Lay down a thin layer of chocolate pudding.
5. Add a third brownie.
6. Put two large scoops of chocolate ice cream on top.
7. Cover it with a generous layer of hot fudge.
8. Sprinkle dark chocolate shavings on the hot fudge.
9. Have a transvestite from the French Quarter pee all over it.

Change that's hard to find

Last week in Denver there was a lot of talk about change.

Barry Obama tried to paint himself as some sort of new, post-partisan Democrat.

But how much "change" does he really have?

To find out, let's compare BO's platform to John Kerry's 2004 platform which was soundly rejected by voters.

The two are so similar that it is easier to note the changes than the similarities. Point by point, Obama wants to do the same things the voters said "no" to in 2004. There are some minor details altered, but it is surprisingly devoid of new ideas.

Both platforms extend Bush's tax cuts for the middle class, but repeal them for the "rich". The definition of "rich" has changed from $200,000 in yearly income to $250,000. That's change you can believe in, if you make between $200,000 and $249,999.

The 2004 platform proposed a major increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit, a wealth transfer provision which gives refunds to the poorest working Americans. The centerpiece of the 2008 tax plan is a radical new idea to help the poorest Americans: an increase in the EITC!

In 2004 there was a plan to "pay for child care and elder care". This time it just says that government will "help pay for child care." No mention of elders, but that is probably just an oversight, unless jettisoning the elderly is the change we can believe in.

The platforms for 2004 and 2008 both promise to change the tax code to make it less rewarding for U.S. corporations to locate operations abroad. Kerry also promised also to reduce the corporate-tax rate a bit, an acknowledgment that the U.S.'s high taxes were undermining our competitiveness.

This convention's plan has ditched that carrot, and replaced it with the silliest passage in platform history: ``We will bring together government, private industry, workers, and academia to turn around the manufacturing sector.'' Obama's plan to help the manufacturing sector appears to be, ``Unleash the bureaucrats and professors.''

In 2004, when oil was trading for $40 a barrel, the platform called for some additional exploration. Now, with oil over $100 per barrel, BO doesn't call for any new exploration. Instead, just inflate your tires.

For Social Security, both platforms promise to protect it, and not to privatize it. The platform this time around also advocates automatic enrollment for 401(k)s.

In 2004, Kerry promised to use tough "pay as you go" rules to enforce fiscal discipline. Those rules were adopted in 2007, but they proved to be ineffective, as the budget deficit under the Democrat-controlled Congress rose from $248 billion in 2006 to $357 billion in 2008, mainly because Democrats voted to ignore the "pay as you go" rules when they got in the way of their big spending plans. The fact that "pay as you go" has been shown to be a failure doesn't seem to make any difference to the Party Platform. The same "pay as you go" language is in BO's 2008 platform. What makes anyone believe that it will work this time? After all, it was not President Bush who voted to ignore the rule, it was Democrats in Congress.

So when you line it all up, the promise of "change" is just a promise to do the same old things that Democrats always do. More taxes, more government intrusion, more wealth transfer, more entitlements. In the past it failed every time, but that is only because it wasn't done by the right people. BO is the right person because he can give a really good speech. This time it will work. Really. It will.

Socialized Medicine -- keep the change

Part of the "Change" BO wants to inflict on America is to socialize our medical care. He throws around numbers like "47 million uninsured Americans" and points to the medical utopias of government-run medicine in Canada and Europe. Naturally, the 47 million figure is very misleading, because most of those people are young, healthy people who choose to self-insure. Eleven million more are illegal immigrants, and five million are non-citizens, neither of which would be covered under Obama's plan. Very few of those 47 million are the poor and elderly, as Obama tried to portray them. There are already government programs to provide health care to those people.

Let's take a look at the socialized health-care systems Obama wants to emulate.

Take the much-vaunted Canadian system. More than 825,000 Canadian citizens are currently on waiting lists for surgery and other necessary treatments. Fifteen years ago, the average wait between a referral from a primary-care doctor to treatment by a specialist was around nine weeks. Today, that wait is over 16 weeks.

That’s almost double what doctors consider clinically reasonable. As Canadian physician Brian Day explained to The New York Times, Canada “is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.”

In part, these waits are due to a doctor shortage. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada ranks 24th out of 28 countries in doctors per thousand people.

Why so few doctors? Over the past decade, about 11 percent of physicians trained in Canadian medical schools have moved to the United States. That’s because doctors’ salaries in Canada are negotiated, set and paid for by provincial governments and held down by cost-conscious budget analysts. Today, in fact, the average Canadian doctor earns only 42 percent of what a doctor earns in the United States.

Canada also limits access to common medical technologies. When compared with other OECD countries, Canada is 13th out of 24 in access to magnetic resonance imagings, 18th of 24 in access to computed tomography scanners, and seventh of 17 in access to mammograms.

The problems plaguing Canada are characteristic of all universal health care systems.

In Britain, more than 1 million sick citizens are currently waiting for hospital admission. Another 200,000 are waiting just to get on a waiting list. Each year, Britain’s National Health Service cancels around 100,000 operations.

Britain even has a government agency explicitly tasked with limiting people’s access to prescription drugs. Euphemistically called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Effectiveness, the agency determines which treatments the British health care system covers. More often than not, saving money takes priority over saving lives.

In 2008, for instance, NICE refused to approve the lung cancer drug Tarceva. Despite numerous studies showing that the drug significantly prolongs the life of cancer patients — and the unanimous endorsement of lung cancer specialists throughout the United Kingdom — NICE determined that the drug was too expensive to cover relative to its effectiveness.

Britain’s behavior is typical — every European government rations drugs to save money. Eighty-five new drugs hit the U.S. market between 1998 and 2002. During that same time period, only 44 of those drugs became available in Europe.

According to an August 2008 study published in Lancet Oncology, the renowned British medical journal, Americans have a better than five-year survival rate for 13 of the 16 most prominent cancers when compared with their European and Canadian counterparts.

With breast cancer, for instance, the survival rate among American women is 83.9 percent. For women in Britain, it’s just 69.7 percent. For men with prostate cancer, the survival rate is 91.9 percent here but just 73.7 percent in France and 51.1 percent in Britain. American men and women are more than 35 percent more likely to survive colon cancer than their British counterparts.

The driving factor which makes American health care the best in the world is free enterprise driven by the limitless opportunity to profit from your own work and innovation. This profit motive, much maligned by liberals, is responsible for America's status as world leader in producing modern medical techniques, equipment and medicines, not only for our own people, but to export around the world.

The United States produces over half of the $175 billion in health care technology products purchased globally. In 2004, the federal government funded medical research to the tune of $18.4 billion. By contrast, the European Union — which has a significantly larger population than the United States — allocated funds equal to just $3.7 billion for medical research.

Between 1999 and 2005, the United States was responsible for 71 percent of the sales of new pharmaceutical drugs. The next two largest pharmaceutical markets — Japan and Germany — account for just 4 percent each.

Squelching that productivity and innovation by nationalizing the medical industry would be a change, but not a change for the better.

Why I envy my wife

He's at it again

Today the Democrat hero, Bill Clinton was speaking in Denver. Here is what he had to say:

"Suppose you're a voter, and you've got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?"

Maybe he should have called them candidate XY and XX.

After a pause, the former President added, "This has nothing to do with what's going on now."

Yeah. And nothing to do with your desperate attempts to create a legacy for yourself, either.

Am I reading this wrong?

He is Obama's pastor of twenty years.

Obama called him his mentor, spiritual advisor, and friend.

He performed the marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama and baptized their kids.

They flew around the world together and hobnobbed with luminaries like Louis Farrakhan and Muammar Qadhafi.

Obama cited him as the inspiration for his book "The Audacity of Hope."

He is the one of whom Obama said: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother... These people are a part of me."

So why is Jeremiah Wright nowhere to be found on the schedule of appearances for the Democrat Convention?

A historic second

I predict that tonight will be the SECOND time in her adult life that Michelle Obama will be proud of America.

Shameless plug

This is a shameless plug for my new bumper sticker design which you can now buy from Zazzle.com. They are cheaper by the dozen, so order one for everyone you know.

Thunderbird is so right

Another demonstration of Thunderbird's remarkably intelligent filtering software.

The question is: Will America fall for the scam?

Little Joey Biden

An Obama-Biden ticket would be one of the most fun things in recent memory because Biden has spent the past couple of years feeding us some great material on topics including McCain's strengths, Obama's weaknesses, the importance of experience, and the war in Iraq. When Hillary attacked Obama for being vacuous, inexperienced and running a campaign based on empty rhetoric and silver-tongued speeches, Obama responded by pointing out the importance of words:

"Don't tell me words don't matter. 'I have a dream.' Just words? 'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words? 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words? Just speeches?"

Remembering Obama’s point that words mean things, let’s take a look at some of Joe Biden’s words which will come back to bite Obama and Biden.

Biden appearing on The Daily Show, August 2, 2005: “John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off, be well off no matter who...”

On Meet the Press, November 27, 2005: “I’ve been calling for more troops for over two years, along with John McCain and others subsequent to my saying that.”

Biden on Obama and Hillary, in an interview with the Huffington Post: “The more people learn about them (Obama and Hillary) and how they handle the pressure, the more their support will evaporate.”

December 11, 2007, Biden for President Campaign Manager Luis Navarro said: “If Iowans believe campaign funds and celebrity will fix the debacle in Iraq, put the economy on track, and provide health care and education for America’s children, they should support another candidate. But I’m confident that Iowans know what I know: our problems will require experience and leadership from Day One. Empty slogans will be no match for proven action on caucus night.”

September 26, 2007: Biden for President Campaign Manager Luis Navarro said, “Sen. Obama said he would do everything possible to end the war in Iraq and emphasized the need for a political solution yet he failed to show up to vote for Sen. Biden’s critical amendment to provide a political solution in Iraq.”

Biden speaking in Iowa campaign ad: “When this campaign is over, political slogans like ‘experience’ and ‘change’ will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act.”

December 26, 2006: “Frankly, I think I’m more qualified than other candidates, and the issues facing the American public are all in my wheelbarrow.”

Biden described Obama, saying "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." I guess that makes all the rest dirty, ignorant, incoherent, dimwits.

In October 2007, Biden was interviewed by the Washington Post editorial board. Here is how he explained the superior test results from Iowa schools: "There's less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with...." It’s those dirty ignorant incoherent dimwits again.

Biden on Meet the Press in 2002, discussing Saddam Hussein: “He’s a long term threat and a short term threat to our national security. We have no choice but to eliminate the threat. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”

Biden on Meet the Press in 2002: “Saddam must be dislodged from his weapons or dislodged from power.”

Biden in October of 2002: “We must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.”

Biden on Meet the Press in 2007, on Hussein’s WMDs: “Well, the point is, it turned out they didn’t, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued — they catalogued them. This was not some pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued.”

Biden to the Brookings Institution in 2005: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out — equally a mistake.”

Joe, by his own admission, has the capacity to fall in love with his own voice and wander off on tangents about his life that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

During the 2006 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the Post's Dana Milbank wrote this of Biden's performance:

"Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., in his first 12 minutes of questioning the nominee, managed to get off only one question. Instead, during his 30-minute round of questioning, Biden spoke about his own Irish American roots, his "Grandfather Finnegan," his son's application to Princeton (he attended the University of Pennsylvania instead, Biden said), a speech the senator gave on the Princeton campus, the fact that Biden is "not a Princeton fan," and his views on the eyeglasses of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)."

And my personal favorite: "You CANNOT go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent…I’m not joking!"

At the South Carolina Rotary Club. December 2006, Senator Biden of Delaware reminded us that Delaware was “a slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way.”

We are supposed to be relieved by Joe Biden’s selection because it is reassuring to have a grownup on the ticket. Maybe we should listen to the grownup and not elect someone with 142 days of experience in the US Senate.

A very young Michael Phelps

Jive Talk Express

Barry Obama has been asked about his votes as Illinois Senator to kill a bill which would have protected babies born alive after attempted abortions.

In 2001, Barry was the only member of the Illinois Senate to oppose the bill, and when a second bill came to his committee in 2003, he cast the deciding vote to kill the bill. A similar bill in the US Senate passed unanimously, and was even endorsed by abortion's biggest fan, Senator Barbara Boxer.

Barry Obama is very embarrassed by his voting record on this bill, as indicated by his efforts to explain it away using demonstrable false excuses. Last week, Barry gave an interview to CBN’s David Brody in which he claimed that he opposed the born-alive bills because they lacked “neutrality” language on Roe v. Wade and therefore, he claims, they would have weakened that Holy Grail of liberal inventions.

I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported — which was to say — that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born - even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level. What that bill also was doing was trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade.

Someone is indeed lying.

Senate Bill SB1082, the bill in question, contains an Amendment 001 which specifically states:

1 AMENDMENT TO SENATE BILL 1082
2 AMENDMENT NO. . Amend Senate Bill 1082 on page 1, by
3 replacing lines 24 through 26 with the following:
4 "(c) Nothing in this Section shall be construed to
5 affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal
6 right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at
7 any point prior to being born alive as defined in this
8 Section.".

This Amendment is identical to the language of the Federal bill he claims he would have supported. The Committee voting record shows that Barry Obama voted for this Amendment, which passed unanimously, and then proceeded to vote along with five other Democrats to kill the bill, in a 6 to 4 vote.

This proves not only that his explanation for his vote is false, but that he knows it to be false. The truth is that Barry took a more radical position than Barbara Boxer, opposing a law to protect babies born alive from being left to die.

The phone made me do it

In this tale of tragedy and woe, we are reminded that cell-phones are the cause of everything.

HIGHLAND, Calif. — Authorities say a 16-year-old girl who died after losing control of her car had been texting on her cell phone moments before the accident.

Kayla Preuss, of Highland, was driving on the Interstate 10 Freeway in Redlands when she lost control of her car and crashed. She died of head injuries.

Authorities say Preuss had been driving drunk and was speeding. But another factor may have contributed to the crash.

Phone records show Preuss was texting just before the accident. Her cell phone, which was flipped open, was found resting on the floorboard by her feet.

Preuss' mother Kelly said she hopes the accident will make other people think before texting and driving.

Surely it was not the unsupervised sixteen-year-old drunk speeding female driver. It was the cell phone's fault.

She died of head injuries. No mention in the article that these injuries were congenital.

McCain smokes Obama...again

Obama currently stands at 1.5% ahead of McCain in the polls. At this point in 2004, John Kerry was much further ahead of George Bush. At this point in 2000, Al Gore was much further ahead of George Bush. At this point in 1988, Michael Dukakis was much further ahead of Bush Sr. At this point in 1980, Jimmy Carter was much further ahead of Ronald Reagan. At this point in 1972, George McGovern was much further ahead of Richard Nixon. The one thing they all have in common is that as America found out who they were and what they stood for, the initial lead that these liberal Democrats enjoyed evaporated away.

And twice more in the past few days, John McCain has clearly and unequivocally smoked Barry Obama.

The first case was in their responses to Russia’s aggression against Georgia. John McCain immediately denounced Russia’s actions as unacceptable and called on the world to stand solidly in support of Georgia. Barry Obama issued a wishy-washy, namby pamby statement saying that Russian and Georgia should be nicer and talk about their differences and maybe they should try holding hands and wearing tie-dyes because that always makes *me* feel so much better. Then he said that John McCain was shooting from the hip with his strong denunciation of Russian aggression. Two days later, Barry revised his statement to say that Russia really shouldn’t have invaded Georgia and they should get time out. Several days later he issued a third statement sounding much like John McCain’s “shooting from the hip” first statement, but suggesting that McCain was reckless to get it right the first time.

The second case was on Saturday when Barry Obama and John McCain answered questions from Rick Warren. Or at least John McCain answered the questions, sounding confident and forthright. Barry, who reported $4.2 million in household income for 2007, gave responses like “To answer the with specificity would be above my pay grade.” To fully appreciate how completely McCain smoked Obama, just look at the whining from the Obama camp immediately afterwards. They wasted no time in suggesting, without a shred of evidence, that John McCain “cheated” by listening to the questions in advance. I suppose that his vastly superior performance could not be explained by the fact that McCain gave direct, honest answers while Obama was searching for ambiguous, politically expedient ways to obscure his real opinions.

Look for more McCain victories and Obama excuses as the debates begin.

American Dream

Check out this draft copy of the Democrat Party platform, based on the conventional liberal conviction that the American Dream is achieved through entitlement programs from a benevolent Federal Government.

On page 29:

We will start by renewing the American Dream for a new era -- with the same new hope and new ideas that propelled Franklin Delano Roosevelt towards the New Deal and John F. Kennedy to the New Frontier. We will provide immediate relief to working people who have lost their jobs, families who have lost their homes, and people who have lost their way.

Perhaps Barry Obama's plan to help people who have lost their way is to give them a GPS navigation system. If it has a built-in tire gauge, all the better.

British Backfire

Want to see that celebrated British stiff upper lip begin to quiver? Just mention to Parliament or press that England is not the isle of tranquility envisioned more than a century ago, when the nation began the systematic disarmament of its citizens.

After years of chipping away at private firearm ownership through passage of a rash of seemingly innocuous rules and regulations, with the adoption of a total handgun ban in 1997, the British achieved what was hailed as the "gold standard" of gun control. At the time, leading newspapers in England heralded this "restraint on personal liberty" as "essential to the happiness" of the country's law-abiding.

The credo was a simple but vacuous one: fewer guns mean fewer crimes. Essentially, it was the legal intention that "nobody, except a soldier, sailor or policeman" should ever have access to a handgun. Simultaneously, the courts took up the cause, prosecuting those who resisted violent attacks with any sort of armed reaction. Over time, it became evident that predators were apt to be judged less harshly than victims who used any type of device, even a stout stick, in an act of self-defense.

According to the utopian scheme of things, gun bans were supposed to evoke a kinder and gentler world-a social paradise concocted by politicians who believed that civilized society could only be made crime-free through the confiscation of all arms. At the same time, it seemed pertinent for the government to also divest British citizenry of all normal human reactions regarding self-preservation.

The results have been as tragic as they were predictable.

A litany of failures were apparent as early as the year 2000, when CBS News reported that law and order in Britain was deteriorating at a rapid rate, while the country was experiencing a crime surge much more severe than any recorded within the United States.

"Have a nice daydream," was the retort fired back at CBS from editorialists with the London Mirror, the same daily newspaper fond of pointing out that the British crime rate was "nothing at all compared to the Wild West culture on the other side of the Atlantic, where every other car is carrying a gun."

However, in time, in stories sandwiched between inside pages, the newspaper conceded that CBS was right. "Britain has overtaken the U.S. for all major crimes," the newspaper admitted. In fact, the motherland was indeed racing ahead by a substantial lead, sporting a crime rate in England and Wales that at times peaked at as much as 60 percent above crime statistics here in the States, with gun crimes especially prominent.

So how could a nation operating under an alleged discipline of total disarmament suddenly become victim to a spike of armed, violent crime? Especially a country that advanced the notion that individuals had a right to personal security more than 100 years before it became a fixture in America?

Consider that William Blackstone, an early British champion of working-class citizens, argued that the right of self-protection was one no government could take away. Another champion of individual rights, A.V. Dicey, cautioned that if the government discouraged self-help, then loyal subjects became the slaves of ruffians.

It's no wonder that the U.S. Constitution would feature a Bill of Rights insisting on a Right to Keep and Bear Arms. For generations following the British insistence on equal rights for its citizens, including the right to self-defense, subjects of the Crown were among the safest and most law-abiding in the world, with a crime rate that truly was the envy of its neighbors.

Things began to disintegrate in the 20th century with the passage of laws that increasingly restricted private possession of firearms, along with edicts forbidding the right to carry arms for self-protection. Eventually, British law determined that even vigorous self-defense could only be "reasonable in the circumstances." By 1969, British police officers were told by higher authorities "it should never be necessary for anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person."

British wags were quick to point out that the justice system appeared to have its philosophical hat on backwards. One commentator said the courts seemed to regard the scandal of the killing of a robber as of greater consequence than the safety of the robber's victim. Such comments soon were both numerous and scathing, and not without good reason.

Grumblings in the British press increasingly mirrored grassroots opinions about the plight of the law-abiding: "The monumentally useless British police, with greater manpower per capita, higher rates of pay and with far more lavish resources than the Americans, haven't had an original idea in decades, so they cling ever more fiercely to their core ideology: the best way to deal with criminals is to impose ever greater restrictions and inconveniences on the law-abiding."

In 2002, the chances of being mugged in London were approximately six times greater than in New York City, cultural center of the "lawless Wild West" so often mocked by British snobbery.

Another accused Tony Blair of going "total: blame everyone, ban everything."

Essentially, the firearm issue never has been about the guns themselves, but more about eroding social mores balanced against the rights of the individual. And while America has thus far managed to protect its Right to Keep and Bear Arms for self-protection (borrowed for use in our Constitution from the 1689 English Bill of Rights), many of the English rank and file clamor to have theirs back as societal mayhem takes advantage of the vacuum created by disarmament.

Dismayed Brits point to their country's egregious gun laws, the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy, and argue that they not only didn't reduce violent crime but managed, as documented by the British press, to leave "law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals confident (their) victims have neither the means nor legal rights to resist them." The BBC reported that gun bans "seem to have little impact on the criminal underworld," while the use of handguns to commit crimes rose 40 percent during the two years following the total ban on them.

Simultaneously, the number of innocent citizens robbed at gunpoint rose some 53 percent. In 2002, the chances of being mugged in London were approximately six times greater than in New York City, cultural center of the "lawless Wild West" so often mocked by British snobbery. Overall, rates of assault, robbery and burglary shot past those recorded in America and, maybe most ominously, 53 percent of British burglaries were said to occur while the residents were still in their homes.

Even so, British lawmakers have stuck to the notion that people don't need to protect themselves, because society can and will. And, in a defenseless populace besieged by a growing climate of violence, police urge individuals witnessing a crime to walk on by as if nothing had happened; to let the pros handle it . . . if only they could.

Contrast this to attitudes in the U.S., where law enforcement professionals are among the first to acknowledge that police can't be everywhere and can't protect everyone from criminal attack, and that in many instances individuals have not only a right but a responsibility to protect lives, family and property. At the same time, the majority of candid police officials in this country openly admit that it would be nearly impossible to rid the nation of firearms if guns were banned, or to keep illegal guns from entering the country.

British citizens have found this out the hard way. They found it out in a delivery truck allegedly loaded only with frozen pizzas, a truck with a Croatian driver carrying smuggled firearms in the midst of all that cheese and crust. They also found it in the post-war economy of the Balkans, a region accustomed to supplying guns to those willing to supply cash in return, no matter what laws may be on the books. They found it in the numbers of deactivated, collectible guns refitted to work on the street. And the English have found, to their dismay, that governmental decrees don't necessarily receive consensus respect. There are and will continue to be firearms in Britain, even if Parliament demands the surrender of everything from fine double barrel skeet guns to the most common child's air rifle. The proof, no matter the amount of bureaucratic gibberish to the contrary, continues to generate headlines that shock the nation.

British society remains outraged by stories like the one involving the murder of an 11-year-old boy, a bright and personable child walking home from football practice, gunned down for no apparent reason by another youth riding a bicycle. Brits have seen gunfire erupt in a courtroom when armed men sought to free two defendants in a nightclub shooting. They've listened to reports concerning two men killed by automatic gun fire in what had been a quiet residential neighborhood, and read headlines about the 19-year-old woman killed while walking along a main street in East London, murdered by thugs who sought to steal her cell phone.

According to the Manchester (England) Guardian, Manchester residents fear that the city is slipping into what they refer to as "Gunchester days" due to gang activity and shootings. And there's little consolation to be found in the fact that Parliament promised it couldn't happen, that the civilian population would be compensated for the loss of personal liberty by heightened law enforcement-a sad state of affairs from a country that gave the world the Magna Carta.

Maybe the most chilling scenarios generated by Britain's attempt to legislate a disarmed society are the tribulations of those simply seeking to survive it. Take for instance the English homeowner who used a toy gun to detain burglars caught in his home. When police arrived, the homeowner himself was arrested for using a fake firearm to threaten or intimidate.

Or consider the plight of an elderly woman who fired a cap pistol in an attempt to frighten away a group of young rowdies who besieged her. She was arrested for placing someone in fear.

Or how about the businessman who, during a mugging, pulled an ornamental knife from his cane and used it to slash his way out of what he feared to be a deadly confrontation. Even though he thought he was on the verge of losing his life, the petroleum executive was convicted of carrying an "offensive weapon."

Rather than face the fact that gun control has actually opened a Pandora's box of violence rather than closed the lid more tightly, an arrogant Parliament and societal upper crust have instead chosen to punish those they can most easily-the remaining Brits with backbone enough to fight for their rights as law-abiding citizens. After all, gangs and street toughs shoot back-and have the firearms to do so in spite of propaganda to the contrary.

Perhaps the time has come for Britain to rethink its restrictions on the rights of good citizens, and focus on the mayhem routinely practiced by the bad ones. If Parliament would only do the right thing and take necessary steps to reinstate the most basic human right of self-preservation, then maybe those of us here in the United States would resist the urge to say, "I told you so," and instead cheer the resurrection of liberty back in the land where it started.

It's a matter of judgment

This proves once for all that John Edwards has even worse judgment than Prince Charles.

Time for a special session

Troops, it is time to take action. Let President Bush know that we want him to call a special session of Congress to vote on the Republican's comprehensive energy plan. Nancy Pelosi refused to vote on it, knowing that anyone who voted against it would have major problems getting re-elected. As a result, it would most likely pass. With gas around $4 a gallon, we deserve an up or down vote on this important plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and boost the supply of oil. Contact President Bush today by email or phone and let him know that this is important enough to warrant calling a special session of Congress. Don't let the cowardly Nancy Pelosi and Barry Obama dodge their duty to the country.

Email: president@whitehouse.gov
Phone: 202-456-1111

Democrats weigh in

Pelosi and Obama sittin' in a tree

Last week, to much fanfare and media frenzy, and fawning interviews on The Today Show, The View, and This Week, the Speaker of the House, the most powerful woman in politics, the glass-ceiling shattering, the history-making Nancy Pelosi launched her groundbreaking new book.

In the first week, she sold 2,737 books. One out of every 111,362 people in this great country rushed headlong to lay down good money for this book, propelling the book on a meteoric rise to 41st place on the New York Times Non-Fiction bestseller list. There were no reports of hapless bystanders trampled in the stampede to the book store.

In the same week, Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality debuts at Number One on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Barry Obama has been trying to tie McCain to Bush. However, there is much more similarity between Obama and Pelosi. And President Bush is a lot more popular than Congress. So John McCain should respond by highlighting the association between Obama and Pelosi.

Keep the change

If John McCain wants to win this election, there is one thing he must do immediately: hire me to run his campaign.

His campaign has gained some ground in the past week, striking at some of his opponent’s weaknesses, questioning his ability to lead, and calling Obama on playing the race card. We all know that Obama is all sizzle and no steak, but McCain needs to do better. Show some energy and some passion for the principles you want to advance as President.

Instead we get ads like this: "Washington's broken. John McCain knows it. We're worse off than we were four years ago. Only McCain has taken on Big Tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He'll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again." This is an ad I would expect from Barry. Fighting corruption is certainly a good thing, but the government can't make America prosper by fighting the companies which do all the hiring, innovating, and producing which propels our economy.

Here are the issues I would be shouting from the rooftops if I was McCain’s campaign director:

1. The economy. Barack Obama’s policies mean more taxes, more government regulations, higher gas prices, a government-run healthcare disaster, and massively increased transfer of wealth, all in the name of “economic justice” and environmental extremism. But there is nothing “just” about appropriating money from someone who earned it and giving it to someone who did not. If I did that, they would throw me in jail, and rightfully so. Barack Obama would decimate our nation’s economy. John McCain would not raise taxes or increase government intrusion into our lives. He would fight earmarks, expand the drilling for oil, and use free-market principles to grow the economy.

2. The War on Islamofascism. Barack Obama’s ignorance and naivety on foreign policy has been repeatedly displayed by his own statements. Barack would surrender Iraq to the terrorists and meet without preconditions with the thugs and tin-horn dictators from countries which hate America and want to obliterate Israel. Obama would be a pathetically weak President without the spine or the wherewithal to stand up for America’s interests. We need a President with the intestinal fortitude as well as the knowledge and experience to unapologetically lead the greatest nation on earth, not outsource our foreign policy decision making to the UN. With Obama, all you get is namby-pamby feel-good platitudes. I don’t want a “Citizen of the World” as our President. I want someone who is American and proud of it, with the good sense to not spend twenty years attending a Church which spews racist, anti-American hatred. John McCain has loads of experience and knowledge of foreign policy. Comparing McCain to Obama in terms of who I would trust with our national security, McCain wins hands down. They are not even in the same league.

3. Energy independence. This is directly related to both items above. Using our own energy will greatly reduce prices and stop the funding of governments hostile to America. Obama’s plan is to tell people to inflate their tires. The real solution is a lot more complicated than that. We need a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy. In the short term, we need to drill for oil wherever it can be found: off the coast, in ANWR, and any other place where it is economically viable to extract it. The government should not stand in the way of using our resources. In addition, we need to build refineries and nuclear power plants. In the long term, we need to develop viable alternative sources of energy, perhaps hydrogen-fueled cars or fusion power plants. John McCain is right to encourage free market capitalism to be the driving force in that effort. If a certain technology is not economically viable, government should not be subsidizing it or mandating it as Obama supported doing with ethanol. When the market demands it, there will be no stopping the ingenuity of our entrepreneurial engine of productivity.

Ronald Reagan upset the hapless Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Presidential election by focusing on three key issues. He promised that if he was elected President, he would lower taxes, scale back government, and strengthen the military. In 2008 the issues have changed, but by energetically espousing his positions and the principles on which they are built and demonstrating the superiority of his leadership in these specific areas, John McCain could win the election and go to the White House with a clear mandate.

Organized labor minus the labor

B. Hussein Obama doesn't have much on his resume to brag about, so he talks a lot about his time as a "community organizer" in Chicago. However, Obama is vague about what exactly a community organizer actually does, leaving people to imagine him volunteering at the local soup kitchen or running a neighborhood sports league.

The reality is that a community organizer is like organized labor, only without the labor.

The job of a community organizer is to consolidate power and control for his own political advantage. It is a bare-knuckled, old-fashioned form of the political power grab born on the streets of Chicago.

Community organizing began in the Depression-era slums of Chicago's South Side when Saul Alinsky organized the people living in one of the worst slums in America, the "Back of the Yards." Alinsky described this area as "a cesspool of hate: the Poles, Slovaks, Germans, Negroes, Mexicans, and Lithuanians all hated each other and all of them hated the Irish, who returned the sentiment in spades." But Alinsky didn't need to get the people to love each other. He just needed them to work the system together, to extract handouts from the government, making them dependent on him. As Alinsky once put it, “to fuck your enemies, you’ve first got to seduce your enemies.”

Alinsky’s key insight was that poor people in places like Back of the Yards do not have access to traditional forms of power, but they do have numbers. He believed that if enough poor people realized that it was in their interest to work together and fight for particular issues, they could pressure people in power to give them what they want.

Just as labor unions organize workers to get better pay, benefits, and working conditions, community organizers use collective pressure to make demands. The major difference is that community organizers are looking for government handouts, not better compensation for productive labor. Hence I say that a community organizer is like organized labor, only without the labor.

Alinsky devised a strategy which he later taught at the Industrial Areas Foundation. One of the central principles he taught was to not rely on high-minded ideals like “brotherly love” or “the common good” to motivate people to join together for a particular goal. Instead, a community organizer looks for ways to appeal directly to a person’s self-interest. Looking out for number one drives every level of community organizing.

The first phase of community organizing is to build up a base of support by seeking out the leaders in an area, finding out what their self-interest is, and building a coalition of people willing to join together for a common cause. The community organizer doesn’t have to care at all about that cause, because his objective is his own empowerment, not a desire to help others.

Next, the community organizer identifies “the mark,” a government official who can get him what he wants. Perhaps he chairs an appropriations committee which controls the funding for a particular program. The community organizer scheduled a meeting with “the mark” where leaders, carefully cultivated and coached by the organizer, will present their demands in a meticulously scripted manner. The objective is not only to let “the mark” know their desires, but to impress on him that it is in his self-interest to comply. The stick is far more important than the carrot here, so they make it clear that failing to produce the goods will result in negative repercussions. If they have blackmail material available, all the better.

While it is vital that the community organizer convinces his base that he is looking out for their interests, his ultimate goal is to use them to gain personal power by getting as many people as possible to look to him for provision. Thus community organizing is married to collectivist ideologies such as socialism and diametrically opposed to conservative principles such as self-reliance and free market capitalism.

Barack Obama is schooled in the Alinsky-style art of political intimidation known euphemistically as “community organizing.” Recognizing this fact helps in understanding Obama’s recent move towards the center in matters such as his vote on the FISA bill. As a community organizer, he is a student of power and he knows not to worry so much about the power he has. Instead he is concerned with gaining control over the power he does not have. In this bare-knuckle form of old-school liberal politics, the only thing that can hurt you is the power you cannot control. Obama’s flip-flops are the community organizer working to build new alliances and neutralize threats to his power. It’s what any Alinskyite worth his salt would do.

Squelching the rumor

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today denied rumors that he is considering a run for the Presidency.

The Senator, best known for taking principled stands against Republicans, dismissed the reports as "baseless speculation."

No reporters attended the McCain press conference, as they were all covering the "Obama walks on water" event on the Sea of Galilee.

For weeks, the blogosphere has been abuzz with chatter speculating that the former POW and supporter of amnesty for illegal immigrants may soon start to build an organization, raise funds, get out his message, espouse the superiority of his experience, ideas, and ideology, champion the cause of freedom, and point out the numerous weaknesses in the one declared candidate.

What do these things have in common?

What do these things have in common?

• Acne
• aggressive weeds
• amphibians breeding earlier
• anxiety treatment
• Atlantic Ocean less salty
• Atlantic Ocean more salty
• Avalanches reduced
• Avalancehes increased
• Snow in Baghdad
• Shortage of Beer
• brain eating amoebae
• circumcision in decline
• early marriages
• frogs with extra heads
• killer cornflakes
• NFL threatened
• noctilucent clouds
• opera house to be destroyed
• popcorn rise
• railroad tracks deformed
• sexual promiscuity
• witchcraft executions

Give up?

They have all been blamed on man-made "global warming."

And that is just the tip of the rapidly growing iceberg with an "endangered" polar bear clinging on for dear life. For the full list, check out this web site.

What is particularly remarkable is that global warming continues to accomplish these amazing feats in spite of the fact that the global temperature has not increased in the past eight years.