Tea Party Tsunami Capsizing Dem, Repub Luxury Yachts

Kevin Drum says the Teapartiers aren't really new:

The growth of the tea party movement isn't really due to the recession (in fact, polling evidence shows that tea partiers are generally better off and less affected by the recession than the population at large). It's not because Obama is black (white Democratic presidents got largely the same treatment). And it's not because Obama bailed out General Motors (so did George W. Bush). It's simpler. Ever since the 1930s, something very much like the tea party movement has fluoresced every time a Democrat wins the presidency, and the nature of the fluorescence always follows many of the same broad contours: a reverence for the Constitution, a supposedly spontaneous uprising of formerly nonpolitical middle-class activists, a preoccupation with socialism and the expanding tyranny of big government, a bitterness toward an underclass viewed as unwilling to work, and a weakness for outlandish conspiracy theories.

And I found it interesting to compare the Tea Party of today with another Venezuelan phenomenon occurring, with much greater resistance and difficulty, against another socializing madman, the redoubtable fatboy Hugo Chavez:

For a movement short of money, with limited access to broadcast media, run almost entirely by volunteers and vilified daily by official media, this is highly impressive. Slowly, over the last twelve years, the opposition has learned some basic lessons about democracy and what it takes to champion it in the face of an autocratic onslaught. The first has to do with unity: a movement long riven by personal rivalries and intractable clique dynamics finally pulled together to put forward a single, unified slate and campaign with an impressive degree of message discipline. The kinds of feuds and splits that had earned them a well-deserved reputation for haplessness simply vanished in this cycle.

The second (related) lesson has to do with message discipline: the opposition finally grasped the need to get control of the agenda by picking a powerful theme and sticking to it. This time, with public concern mounting over an unprecedented crime-wave that has left Venezuela with a murder rate four times higher than the death toll for civilians in Iraq, the opposition pushed hard on crime and the government's failure to deal with it. With food inflation clawing back many of the gains in living standards the poor had made earlier in the Chávez era, the opposition put the government on the offensive, highlighting recent scandals in the state-owned food distribution network. Most importantly, the opposition managed to stay on its bread-and-butter message in the face of any number of government attempts to shift the focus of the debate.

The Demonrats are trying to shift the focus of debates, starting with shouts of "racists!" and then continually trying to shift the subject of the conversation away from the horrendous health care bill egomaniac Pelosi and helpless dweeb Reid passed under ridiculous aberrations of House and Senate rules.

And the old-school RINO aristocracy is now beginning to assert themselves, trying to head off Joe Miller by keeping spoilsport Murkowski on Senate committees. What's that all about? Looks like the GOP is going to have to go through what used to be called a "rolling reassessment" as they position themselves chaotically for 2012. Hopefully, they take the House, but if Murkowski stays in the Senate because the Old Guard pulls the rug out from under Joe Miller, an Iraqi vet, and gives the baton to a machine-politico family like the murkowski clan---all bets are off for 2012.

It's All FoxNEWS fault, whines the POTUS!

Call Me Stephen J. Urkel

The Won assumes that the only reason anyone can oppose his bankrupting policies and ridiculous BIG GOVERNMENT/BIG TAXES plans and programs are because of bad faith and a lack of patriotism. Okay for Demonrats to speak truth to power, but not the GOP nor the Tea Partiers [which this obscene POTUS was calling "teabaggers" for a while in honor of his favorite sexual position?]

Here is suck-up question from a Rolling Stone acolyte paying homage to The Won:

What do you think of Fox News? Do you think it's a good institution for America and for democracy?

The sycophantic sillyboy Wenner is answered by the MAN BEHIND THE GREEN CURTAIN:

[Laughs] Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We've got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition--it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with. It's a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it's been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it's that Fox is very successful.

The president's disparagement of Fox doesn't bother us. He has a right to free speech, and we're proud to work for News Corp., which owns the only network that consistently fulfills the press's adversarial role.

But suppose he had ended the answer after the first sentence, simply stating that he supports Fox's rights under the First Amendment and declining to express an opinion about how the network uses those rights? That would have matched precisely his approach to the Ground Zero mosque.

If President Obama is willing to criticize Fox for the way in which it uses its First Amendment rights, why does he refuse to urge the Ground Zero mosque people to move to a less obnoxious site? Or, to put it another way, why is the Ground Zero mosque the only case in which Obama has ever defended anyone's First Amendment rights without qualification?

Could it be that he is a Muslim under the code of taqiyya, which allows denying one's religion to demonstrate just what a third-rate dissembler the POTUS evidently, at the end of the day, doesn't mind allowing himself to be perceived as appearing to be?

Obama Fends Off Hard-Hitting Questions from Rolling Stone Editor

I am Your LIDER & MASTER & SOON your F-WORD!

Rolling Stone & Jann Wenner have gone a long way in the past forty years since I began reading the original back when the Beatles were still cover-fodder---and the horoscope of the month was avidly pursued by yours truly. Now it is devoted to punch/counterpunch interviews like Wenner's mano a mano with Obama:

When you came into office, you felt you would be able to work with the other side. When did you realize that the Republicans had abandoned any real effort to work with you and create bipartisan policy?

How do you feel about the fact that day after day, there's this really destructive attack on whatever you propose? Does that bother you? Has it shocked you?

You get credit for that.

What music have you been listening to lately? What have you discovered, what speaks to you these days?

You had Bob Dylan here. How did that go?

Did you cry?

Obama apparently wasn't prepared for Wenner's tough, no-holds-barred interview style, for he comes across quite poorly in the interview. The Associated Press's summary gives the best indication of why:

Admonishing his own party, President Barack Obama says it would be "inexcusable" and "irresponsible" for unenthusiastic Democratic voters to sit out the midterm elections, warning that the consequences could be a squandered agenda for years.
"People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up," Obama told Rolling Stone in an interview to be published Friday. The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and "if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place."

Jann's mouth agape with shock and awe and even wonder at The Won's cosmic vibes. Obama's "progressive" base has been unhappy with him of late, and he has decided to make it clear that he's unhappy with them, too. As he tells Wenner:

I could have had a knock-down, drag-out fight on the public option that might have energized you and The Huffington Post [sic], and we would not have health care legislation now. I could have taken certain positions on aspects of the financial regulatory bill, where we got 90 percent of what we set out to get, and I could have held out for that last 10 percent, and we wouldn't have a bill. You've got to make a set of decisions in terms of "What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to just keep everybody ginned up for the next election, or at some point do you try to win elections because you're actually trying to govern?" I made a decision early on in my presidency that if I had an opportunity to do things that would make a difference for years to come, I'm going to go ahead and take it.

The president has a point. He has in fact proved himself to be an ideological extremist, governing as far to the left as he possibly can. That's why he's lost Middle America. The left's anger with him is misplaced; the actual source of their frustration is not Obama's policy preferences but the constraints on his ability to act that are entailed by the phrase "as he possibly can."

Yet the interview reveals one of Obama's worst character flaws: his insufferably condescending attitude. He is the kind of guy who is convinced he's always right and suffers from a compulsion to let everyone know he's right. This attitude is no less unattractive on the rare occasion when he actually is right.

As we noted yesterday, the politics of insult can have a certain snob appeal. When liberal politicians talk down to ordinary Americans, it can energize snooty so-called progressives who think they're better than everyone else. But even snooty progressives don't like being talked down to. Because they fancy themselves superior, they probably dislike it with a special intensity. At this rate, it won't be long before Obama's only remaining supporter is Barack Obama.

And even the fons et origo of New York Times linstitutiojnal wisdom, the redoutable Stanley Fish, demurs at the audacious blows The Won keeps landing on his own jaw with occasional belly punches to his own solar plexus:

The Democrats will be helping [Republicans] by saying scathing and dismissive things about the Tea Party and its candidates. The Greek mythological figure Antaeus won victory after victory because his opponents repeatedly threw him to the ground, not realizing that it was the earth (in the figure of his mother, Gaia) that nourished him and gave him renewed strength. The Tea Party's strength comes from the down-to-earth rhetoric it responds to and proclaims, and whenever high-brow critics heap the dirt of scorn and derision upon the party, its powers increase. . . .
Better, perhaps, to take a cue from Hercules, who figured out the source of Antaeus's strength and defeated him by embracing him in a bear hug, lifting him up high, and preventing him from touching the ground. Don't sling mud down in the dust where your opponents thrive. Instead, engage them as if you thought that the concerns they express (if not their forms of expression) are worthy of serious consideration, as indeed they are. Lift them up to the level of reasons and evidence and see how they fare in the rarified air of rational debate where they just might suffer the fate of Antaeus.
It's at least worth a try, because the way things are going we may soon be looking at Senator O'Donnell, Governor Paladino and, down the road a bit, President Palin.

Fish is surely right that Democrats would do better to ditch the condescending tone and strike a reasonable one, though he himself provides a poor example. "Down in the dust where your opponents thrive"? At least he's not as bad as Stanley Crouch of New York's Daily News, who calls to mind Rwanda's genocidaires when he refers to critics of the president as "spiritual vermin."

The problem, however, is that the Democratic left's unreason is a matter of substance as well as tone. ObamaCare, for example, was described as a fiscal perpetual-motion machine: By vastly expanding government control over medicine, it would reduce costs and provide care to everyone. The only way to reconcile these goals is through government rationing of expensive treatment--via death panels, in Sarah Palin's piercing term. The reason they attacked Palin as a "wingnut" for this statement is not that she was unreasonable but precisely that her logic was irrefutable.

Or consider the so-called stimulus law. Obama's economic advisers claimed it was necessary to spend nearly a trillion dollars of our money to prevent unemployment from going as high as 8%. They got their trillion, and we got unemployment of close to 10%. The Obama team now claims that things would have been even worse without the spending spree. Even this dubious assertion--the most favorable possible interpretation from their standpoint--reveals their utter incompetence as economic forecasters. How can the Democrats act reasonable if reason is not on their side?

Oh, Massa Crouch, Puh-leez dowan' throw me into that briar patch......!

Obama & Biden: Bitchin' at the Homies

Don't Teach Me to Fish!

Obama's political tin ear is turning into lead. Really heavy dross-type lead of the type that gives us lead-poisoning. Or rather his own Party:

"People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up," Obama told Rolling Stone in an interview to be published Friday. The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and "if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place."

Does this jug-eared sneak-smoker ever pause for a second to think of how his ragging of his own homefolk sounds to them?
Biden, of course, was a lost cause six months into his Veepdom, as gaffe following verbal stumble succeeded pratfall of the unintended kind. But ol' Joe today told the libtards to "stop whining" which is tantamount to telling these chronic complainers to stop breathing. A low-pitched moan with eyes rolling punctuated by high-note whinging are the characteristic arias each libturd greets the day with.

"It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election," Obama said. The president has been telling Democrats to "wake up" and recognize that he and the Democratic-run Congress have delivered on promises, from a new health care law to tougher rules for Wall Street to more aid for college students. Obama wants disenchanted supporters to see that Republican wins in November would undermine the ability of Democrats to get the unfinished business done, from climate change legislation to allowing gays to serve openly in the military.
What emerges in the magazine story is a stern, lecturing tone from Obama......

"The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible," he said in the interview. He said Democrats should be thinking about what's at stake this election "if they want to move forward over the next two years or six years or 10 years....The president said he keeps a checklist of his campaign promises and that he has met, by his account, about 70 percent of them. As for the rest: "Well, that's what the next two years is for, or maybe the next six.""

Oh yeah, and that 70% is why Demonrats running for their political lives are not saying word one about the ObamaCare debacle as more and more ridiculous rules and regs are uncovered as the Ogress Botox Biyotch Pelosi had promised when, with no committee hearings and zero debate time, the foul Guinea fowl nattering hen intoned: "You'll have to pass it to see what's in it, surely the stupidest statement ever made by a sitting Speaker of the House since before the Civil War.

But if I oppose Obama, the anti-colonialist Brit-hater, any more strongly, I'll be called a racist, so I'd better let well enough alone.

Vaclav Havel for POTUS, if it were possible

Havel delivered an address to the UN telling it to keep out of the world's business. Some Swiss dude named Deiss recommended that the UN assume a "role of global governance." I'm sure that, knowing the Swiss mindset, Deiss wants a bigger role for the UN because of all the UN agencies at Geneva, giving his tiny country a larger role. To which I say: "No Deiss!"

Seriously, the Czech president is a true world leader, moreso than the POTUS who is a joke:

Klaus, a free-market economist who oversaw a wave of privatization in the 1990s after communism collapsed in his homeland, also said the world was "moving in the wrong direction" in combating the economic crisis.

"The anti-crisis measures that have been proposed and already partly implemented follow from the assumption that the crisis was a failure of markets and that the right way out is more regulation of markets," he said.

Klaus said that was a "mistaken assumption" and it was impossible to prevent future crises through regulatory interventions and similar actions by governments.

That will only "destroy the markets and together with them the chances for economic growth and prosperity in both developed and developing countries," he said.

The Czech president, a vocal skeptic of global warming, said the United Nations should also keep out of science, including climate change. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made fighting climate change one of his top priorities.

Bravissimo, Vaclav!

Female Lib Blogresses Tire of Being "Dragged Under the Bleachers" for Obama

Is this Biyotch a Crook or a Liar?


Janet Napolitano five years from yesterday

Skank-ho' Susan Madrak of Crooks & Liars whinged to Axelrod today that the streetwalkers for The Won are getting tired of putting out & getting nothing back, the age-old whinge of a pimp's filly.
Moonbat skank-ho' Madrak whines are commented on by The Other McCain:

Never mind exactly why Madrak went off on David Axelrod during a conference call today. The point is that she’s right.
In order to win elections, Democrats have to pretend to share the values of the American middle class. They can’t afford to associate themselves too publicly with the grungy leftoids who are, in fact, the driving force behind the Democratic policy agenda.

Status Cuomo: HUD Tyro & the SubPrime Mortgage Crisis

Andrew Cuomo has been caught lying---red-handed, as it were, as to his voting for Bloomberg, the fatuous fart-machine Mayor of NYC. Turns out Andrew supported the Demonrat Hispanic candidate in '05, the last time he was registered to vote in the Rotten Apple. But Cuomo did the nation great harm in the closing years of the Clinton Administration, when his incompetence and corruption failed to oversee the FanFred binge-and-purge addiction. Here's the Village Voice, hardly a right-wing attack publication, on Andrew's sheer ineptitude:
A

ndrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why.

Now, as NY State's Attorney General, this preposterous fraud:

has been trying for months to don a white hat in the subprime scandal, pursuing cases against banks, appraisers, brokers, rating agencies, and multitrillion-dollar, quasi-public Fannie and Freddie.

As the youngest HUD Sec'y, 30-something Cuomo's naked ambitions drove him to go further left and further into risk:

Cuomo's predecessor, Henry Cisneros [took] a cautious approach and moving the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low- and moderate-income families. Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages in underserved neighborhoods and for the "very-low-income." Part of the pitch was racial, with Cuomo contending that Fannie and Freddie weren't granting mortgages to minorities at the same rate as the private market. William Apgar, Cuomo's top aide, told The Washington Post: "We believe that there are a lot of loans to black Americans that could be safely purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if these companies were more flexible."

While many saw this demand for increasingly "flexible" loan terms and standards as a positive step for low-income and minority families, others warned that they could have potentially dangerous consequences. Franklin Raines, the Fannie chairman and first black CEO of a Fortune 500 company, warned that Cuomo's rules were moving Fannie into risky territory: "We have not been a major presence in the subprime market," he said, "but you can bet that under these goals, we will be." Fannie's chief financial officer, Timothy Howard, said that "making loans to people with less-than-perfect credit" is "something we should do." Cuomo wasn't shy about embracing subprime mortgages as a possible consequence of his goals. "GSE presence in the subprime market could be of significant benefit to lower-income families, minorities, and families living in underserved areas," his report on the new goals noted.

A susurrus of concern began to rise from the rating agencies, and

Moody's didn't sound an immediate alarm, but its senior analyst, Stanislas Rouyer, said the expansion into subprime loans and the lower level of documentation that came with them could mean that Fannie 's loss levels would increase in the future. Steven Holmes, a reporter from the Times's Washington bureau, wrote at the time: "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," he added, "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 1980s."

Sho' nuf, Lil Andy's hiking of the "goals" had a colossal and immediate effect:

When HUD released the next set of goals in 2004, it reported that after Cuomo's previous edict, there had been a sudden spurt of GSE subprime investment, "partly in response to higher affordable-housing goals set by HUD in 2000." Fannie had gone from $1.2 billion in subprime-mortgage and securities purchases in 2000 to $9.2 billion in 2001 and $15 billion in 2002. Freddie's numbers were murkier, but clearly also on the rise. In 2003 alone, the two bought $81 billion in subprime securities—which also count against the goals.

Fannie also developed a "flexible" product line, providing up to 100 percent financing and requiring borrowers to make as little as a $500 contribution, and bought $13.7 billion of those loans in 2003. In addition to subprime loans and securities, both banks burst into the "alt-a" market, making alternative products easily available to borrowers who had slightly better credit histories than subprime borrowers, but were unwilling to provide full documentation of their financial histories. (It was the "alt-a" investments that recently brought down the private bank IndyMac.) These risky adventures, according to the 2004 HUD report, prompted Freddie to claim that "the increased goals created tension in its business practices between meeting the goals and conducting responsible lending practices," a self-serving attempt to plant the blame back on HUD.

With GWB distracted by foreign adventures and clowns like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd saying there wasn't any real risk, the ballooning sub-primes then skyrocketed:
After this initial uptick, the two banks purchased $434 billion in securities backed by subprime loans between 2004 and 2006.

The Washington Post noted this June that the GSEs' aggressive acquisitions "created a market for more such lending" by others, feeding the fire. No one knows just how big a bite the subprime mess is now taking out of the GSEs, or how much of that portfolio will ultimately go bad, but it has become axiomatic that, whatever the total, it is too much, since it will have seriously shaken confidence in these two linchpin institutions.

That June Post story focused its critical reassessment of HUD's affordable-housing goals on the department's 2004 decision—during the Bush re-election campaign—to juice them up again, pushing the target to 56 percent by 2007. Though the story never mentioned Cuomo—whose three-year, eight-point goal hike exceeded Bush's more gradual six-point increase—it did quote his top aide William Apgar, who helped craft the 2000 policy, saying: "It was a mistake." Apgar, who now teaches at Harvard, conceded, "In hindsight, I would have done it differently."

But wait, there's more from the gifted con-boy Andy, as he put an opaque cloak of non-accountability on his own HUD when producing FanFred rules:

But raising the affordable-housing goals was only half the Cuomo story.

The HUD secretary is also required to produce voluminous rules that govern how the GSEs meet those goals, and the 187-page rules Cuomo issued opened the door to abuse.

The rules explicitly rejected the idea of imposing any new reporting requirements on the GSEs. In other words, HUD wanted Fannie and Freddie to buy risky loans, but the department didn't want to hear just how risky they were......Indeed, in March 2000, HUD had acknowledged that the new goal-driven pressure on the GSEs might "warrant increased monitoring and additional reporting." But when the final rules were adopted in October, that momentary caution had been abandoned: "HUD is not establishing any requirements for additional data to carry out this rule." The report explained that the GSEs "objected" to information mandates "related to their purchases of high-cost mortgages," so HUD decided against imposing "an undue additional burden." HUD would have no way of telling how abusive the low-income mortgages it was mandating might be.

Does it start to sound like Andy is channeling his mobbed-up grandpas who were low-level wise guys and numbers runners, though the Cuomos labored mightily to cover this up and Mario didn't run for POTUS for fear that the media might smoke out his family mob connections. [These were the good ol' days when the quaint custom of investigative journalism by the MSM or "Lamestream Media" was still practiced---Obama is post-IJ and had no such roadblocks such as his birth,campaign contributions, transcripts, connections to crooked realtors and insane preachers and a ghost-writer whose wife was a convicted felon and who himself was proud of killing US officials]

But Cuomo had a different agenda than one might think, and as usual, with Demonrats, always follow the money:

While fashioning these final rules, Cuomo wrestled with the octopus-like reach of Fannie and Freddie, which spend tens of millions each year on lobbying firms. The GSEs hired 88 lobbying firms over six years, three of which were friendly enough with Cuomo to give to his campaign committee later.

Just a look at the New Yorkers tied to the GSEs must have impressed Cuomo, who, after all, would soon return to New York politics. Harold Ickes, the former Clinton chief of staff and a Democratic power broker in this state, was on the Freddie board. Tom Downey, the former New York congressman who would later donate $21,894 to Cuomo, was a Fannie lobbyist. And Al D'Amato, the former banking committee chair who'd shepherded Cuomo's appointment through the Republican Senate, was a Fannie consultant.

But Cuomo was closer to the GSEs' most formidable opponents—namely, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), regarded as the most influential private real-estate finance lobby in Washington, and the upstart FM Watch, a new coalition of heavyweights from Chase to AIG. Both of these groups wanted Cuomo to put as much affordable-housing pressure on the GSEs as he could, and they said so in their releases and newsletters. They opposed what they called Fannie and Freddie's profit-driven "mission creep," which they saw as a publicly subsidized invasion of their high-end mortgage market. Their goal was the same as Cuomo's: to push Fannie and Freddie deeper into low-end mortgages, consistent with the mission statement in their charters

.
Indeed, the MBA was closer to Andy than anyone suspected, and are still donating to his political career: Remember Chris Dodd's pal Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide CEO who got Chris a "sweetheart" deal along with other friends of Countrywide before it crashed and burned?

Two of Cuomo's aides who had also worked for his father, Howard Glaser and Todd Howe, left HUD to take top jobs at the association in the middle of the GSE rule-making (the MBA parted company with both once Andrew was out of HUD). In 2000, a year after Howe joined the association, he described how he had helped build a grassroots MBA effort to pressure Congress and others into supporting HUD in what he described as the "battle" being "waged against Fannie Mae." Glaser's Harvard alumni biography says he "played a key role in negotiating a multi-billion-dollar increase in GSE affordable-housing goals." He and Howe—who insist they had "no contact" with Cuomo on the MBA's behalf—have given $3,000 to Cuomo in recent years.

The MBA also retained Brad Johnson, another ex–Mario Cuomo aide described as his "eyes and ears" in Washington, to lobby HUD while Andrew was secretary. Three other long-term HUD staffers who worked there under Cuomo—including the lawyer who was the contact person listed on the GSE rules—also ended up at the MBA or one of its lobbying firms. Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide who's become the face of the subprime scandal, was at one point the MBA's president and a member of its executive committee throughout Cuomo's HUD tenure. He and other MBA leaders became Cuomo donors, with Mozilo donating $1,000 twice—in 2002 and 2006.

Hilariously, Cuomo is now an Attorney General who refuses to sue and in the past has sided with criminals rather than those who are suing for adjudication of the so-called "yield-spread premium":

Cuomo's fellow attorney generals in Illinois, California, and Massachusetts have filed lawsuits against Countrywide and other mortgage companies in the current crisis. And those lawsuits are aimed in part at the sucker punch called "yield-spread premium" that was thrown at millions of households who got mortgages from brokers. Brokers have taken over the origination market in recent years by aggressively advertising, and they decide which lenders get the business.

Cuomo hasn't sued anybody over these outrageous payments to brokers—which are based on the "spread" between the high interest rate that brokers persuade unwary borrowers to accept and the par or going rate they would ordinarily have to pay. If Cuomo did sue, it might make for an awkward moment or two in court, since it was Cuomo who issued a rule in 1999 that dozens of federal courts have since found legalized the yield-spread premiums. He was the first HUD secretary to say they were "not illegal per se," nullifying most of the 150 class-action lawsuits against them filed across the country.

There are certainly those who believe that YSPs are at the heart of the crisis. Senator Chris Dodd, the chair of the banking committee, is trying to ban them, prodded by the fact that up to 90 percent of subprime mortgages quietly triggered these lucrative payments. When the Federal Reserve recently considered barring them and then backed off, a Times editorial charged that it had "balked on banning the practice whereby brokers maximize their commissions by signing up borrowers for the most expensive loan possible, even when the borrower qualifies for a cheaper." The Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, accused Countrywide of structuring their deals with brokers "in a manner that virtually guaranteed" that they were "more concerned with getting the highest YSP possible than getting their borrowers the best loan possible," oblivious to "the possible fraud that this financial incentive would motivate."

The entire article is much longer and the Voice should have got a Pulitzer for this story. It is a tale that should be told as long as the "Status Cuomo" tries to assert its octopus hands around political power at a higher level.

Barry the Muslim Boy and his hatred of America

Barry Soetero & his Muslim father Lolo

giatny in nyc has this trenchant run-down of the ridiculous steamroller tactics of the Demonrats---Alinsky Rule #5---when issues don't work, use ridicule!

9000 pages of legislation and the only campaign strategy he has is to call the opposition names. Since no one
at the NYT seems to understand, the core policies of the tea party are respect for the Constitution and an end to profligate
spending. But yet, that is considered crazy. Obama has justgiven control of the consumer credit industry to an unelected,
unproven bureaucrat who could not even get the approval of 60 out of 100 Senators when 59 of them caucus with Democrats! The same was true of Dr. Berwick, Craig Becker and countless czars. Obama's complete disdain for the Constitution is ignored, but the public has been deluged for 6 days by the bizarre ramblings of Christine O'Donnell from
20 years ago, 10 days solid about a crazy preacher from Florida, 30 days of endless comments from every living politician on the "ground zero" mosque, weeks of mindless reporting on Sherry Sherrod and Krugman's demands for more
deficit spending. Meanwhile Obama has commandeered control of health care, mortgages, consumer credit, student loans, labor relations, autos, offshore drilling, carbon restrictions, covert amnesty, "green" energy handouts,
$$$$$$ billions of stimulus and TARP, affirmative actions and untold amounts for social engineering. By the way, while
O'Donnell was giving foolish comments about morality in her youth, her opponent Coons was writing papers on being a Marxist!!! When every individual freedom and private industry are compromised and the economy and jobs stay paralyzed by Obama's agenda, will the "intelligentsia" of progressives ever admit what bloody fools they were or will they still pathetically
be calling others names??

The Lamestream Media has been hijacked by the JournoList.serv GroupThinkers, PERIOD. I'm just dying to hear the next leftist half-wit like Joe Klein or Evan Thomas blame the American People as Obama seems to do.

The Demonrats are trying to change the Constitution, and when the country calls them on it, they try to change the SUBJECT. We don't need any more unelected and unratified czars---nor do we need a SCOTUS justice like Breyer, as undistinguished a dolt as sits on the court, to tell Jeffrey Toobin he intends to "support the Obama agenda." This clown Breyer should be impeached.

Here's a quote from one of Barry Soetero's childhood friends in Jakarta: "Neighborhood Muslims worshiped in a nearby house, which has since been replaced by a larger mosque. Sometimes, when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Lolo and Barry would walk to the makeshift mosque together, Adi said. His mother often went to the church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the mosque,” Adi said. “I remember him wearing a sarong.”

Check out the blog-article, which has the definite authentic ring of an Indonesian nationalist.

The Rip Tide Against the Obama One-Termer is at a Record High

Doug McKelway is a distinguished on-air journalist who thought he could get away with speaking truth to power. But he found out that "truth to power" only applies when the GOP is in the White House. A DNC flunky named Bill Lord, who is in charge of agitprop at WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate inside the Beltway, fired Doug for coreectly saying on air how much the Obamanable Snowman gets from Big Oil. Such truth-telling is not acceptable at the ABC Goebbels-operation and here's what some of the outraged readers of the WaPo tiny article on this wrote on the "comments section:"

VAMOM
How do I know that the majority of news organizations are left-leaning? Because I have attended Conservative rallies alongside "journalists" from the Washington Post, ABC NBC and CBS, among others. When their articles and reports came out, I was absolutely stunned at the distortion of facts. For example, the assembly on September 12, 2009 in D.C. was HUGE. I have lived in D.C. for 51 years and have never seen a crowd that large, except on the Bicentennial. I could not walk down Pa. Ave. without bumping people. The demonstration was peaceful, respectful, law-abiding and courteous. What did the news outlets report? That a few thousand "angry white teabaggers" displayed their racism and disdain for the less-fortunate in an unruly uprising. Every one except Fox News lied outright. That's how I know the truth.

fury60
The president who campaigned for a more “open government” and “full disclosure” will not unseal his medical records, his school records, his birth records or his passport records. He will not release his Harvard records, his Columbia College records, or his Occidental College records—he will not even release his Columbia College thesis. All his legislative records from the Illinois State Senate are missing and he claims his scheduling records during those State Senate years are lost as well. In addition, no one can find his school records for the elite K-12 college prep school, Punahou School, he attended in Hawaii.

astonsmyth
WJLA-TV fires veteran anchor Doug McKelway, cites insubordination, misconduct.

Interesting, but a reporter's job is to report truthfully on those stories he or she covers. This story could easily have addressed whether that was the case yet while the writer chose to make mention the comments anchorman Doug McKelway made this report does not say whether those comments were accurate reporting.

The nation's Middle Class knows that the major media is in the hands of just a few extremely large chains. The Death Tax - that Democratic politicians promote as a cure to stop massive fortunes from being passed down within a few families - actually has destroyed independent newspapers, TV stations, and so many American farmers. When a key owner is dying, the other owners and heirs realize that the tax is just so massive compared to the cash flow of their business that they sell the newspaper, TV Station, or farm to an International chain, unaffected by this death tax because it is a corporation. Good Job congress - instead of a Large Free Independent Press we have chain reporting where political concerns shape reporting on our major issues.

Twenty years ago if a reporter was fired for telling the truth, my Lord, the reaction by journalists would have started a major crusade. Now, you don't even feel it is important enough to tell readers if the information that this veteran anchor was fired over was accurate.

I hate the thought of this nation moving so far to the right. But I can see a Middle Class that has been abandoned by the leaders of the Democratic Party. The Middle Class seems to be viewed by these leaders as stupid sheep: bigoted, religious, and only good to provide taxes for these leaders to spend on important issues.

In mid-February 1968, Walter Cronkite journeyed to Vietnam to report on the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. Then, returning his report on February 27, 1968, closed "Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?" with an editorial report that ended with: "But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."

Following Cronkite's editorial report, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." Whether this quote is accurate or not - the loss of support of Middle America weighed heavy in Johnson's decision not to seek a 2nd term as president.

Today Middle Americans are growing angry in a way that I have not seen since the Vietnam War splint our nation apart.

If reporters, newscasters, anchors and commentators are fired for reporting the truth that seems frightening to me. It is also stupid. In this age of the internet the Major Media is no longer the only source of information about current event in our nation. Such stories or news folks being fired for fair criticism now just add to the perception by the Middle Class that it can no longer trust the traditional National Media.

Barry OilBama-Record amount of cash from BP.
Record amount of cash from Goldman Sachs.
Record amount of cash from Fannie Mae.
Record amount of cash from AIG.
Record amount of cash from Freddie Mac.
Record amount of cash from corrupt unions.
Golly gee do I see a trend here?
But of course you could also count the record amount of cash he got from deadbeats and leeches.Who besides the main stain media Barry's most ardent worshippers.

jgfox39
Before ABC puts McKelway's life down the "memory hole", here is what ABC had posted before he was fired.

"Doug McKelway is an Emmy Award-winning anchor and reporter who came home to ABC7/WJLA-TV in October of 2001. Doug co-anchor of Good Morning Washington and ABC7 News at Noon.

Doug comes from a long-line of Washington journalists. His grandfather was the editor of Washington's premier newspaper, "The Evening Star," throughout much of the 20th Century.

Doug was born and raised in Washington. He is a graduate of The Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York.

His first television news job was in Charlotte, North Carolina. He also worked in Kansas, Missouri and Florida, before returning home to Washington.

Doug is a talented Banjo player and on slow news nights, he's found occasionally at local taverns picking Blue Grass music with the best of them.

Doug is married to Susan Ferrechio. He has four children: Doug, Eliza, Chris and Alexander."

I guess his problem is that he learned "old fashioned" journalism with its quaint focus on truth and accuracy from his grandfather."

The Washington Post is hemorrhaging paid circulation and had tpo sell its mag/rag Newsweak, which promptly canned the Head of Youth Cadre & Mging Editor Meacham, who was becoming an embarassment.

Let's see, NBC was sold by GE to Comcast, which more reflects its shabby ethos that Bri-boy Williams, whose lisp was acquired in the usual fashion by an announcer on network TV---surgical separation from the ass of a Demonrat pol---and soon we may see ABC, next most pitiful broadcast network, handed over to ESPN for management and news editing.

Although Bill Lord's handling of Doug does remind us of the Mickey Mouse aspects of the Disney tradition.

Atlantic Monthly Nutjob Ambinder Runs "Bash Palin" Up the Flagpole.

Stephan Urkel On Steroids

Atlantic Monthly has a ultra-left Marxist collection of cyphers who are Jekyll/Hyde changelings, but JournoList cabalmeister Marc Ambinder can always be counted on to channel his notorious-obsessive creepy pal Andy Sullivan, who as few as five years ago claimed he was a "conservative" before outing himself as a Provincetown streetwalker. Now, this wack-job Marc has come up with a grand and [not original] idea---instead of bashing Boehner, the feckless nutjobs in the White House should pummel Palin instead, because her imagined "social" values will repel the Democratic base and stampede them to the polls November 2nd to vote in their local Demonrat candidate.

JOSHUAPUNDIT ridicules the shallow pretentious Ambinder with just the right mix of irony and contempt.

White House spokeshole Robert Gibbs is already laying the ground to make Sarah Palin the new target, calling her 'the most formidable voice of the Republican Party'.

The Hill plays it up as 'rare praise'. Horse manure. What Gibbs is really saying is 'that Right Wing tea Party wacko Sarah Palin is the Republican party. Booga booga booga!!'

Well, I'll give the Obama Administration this - attempting to demonize Sarah Palin one more time is certainly easier than actually trying to run on their policies and record.

But while it plays in leftist strongholds like Manhattan or Georgetown. For most of the rest of the country, it will be seen as a desperate attempt to milk a little more airplay out of the same old song - sorta like the 'Everything is Bush's fault' meme.

The simple fact is that Independents aren't as put off by Palin as they are by this third-rate POTUS's thrashing around trying to find an "angle" or gimmick to get his approval ratings above 40%. Most Dems whose seats are in jeopardy are now telling him to stay away or even supporting a FULL extension of the Bush tax cuts. Pelosi's attempts to call class warfare on the wealthiest 3%. many of whom are small businessmen who think the latest $30 billion in credit is just another Dem con-job attempt, are rejected now by 31 Dems who are going to get squashed November 2nd. Another ten Dems going over to a full extension would mean Pelosi would lose in her own House.

While Ambinder's fantasizing about non-existent Tea Party social issues types, this White House is spinning its wheels just trying to keep its own troops from defecting. Yeah, like in Winter of '44, attack the Yanks in the West, and the Soviets won't invade Berlin.....!

The independents have come to the judgment that Palin isn't as ca-raaaazy as the Pelosi House and it's insane "we have to pass the law to see what it contains...." And Reid's "The war is lost [just as the surge is beginning to work]."

Mike Allen's Playbook "Stuck on Suck-Up"

POLITICO Playbook came out with a bang a couple of months ago with hip, with-it, insider commentary on the Beltway Follies. Now he has descended to sheer slavish adolatry of The Won and relentless repetition of every DNC meme/trope/leit motif brought forward to prolong this criminal regime's hold on power, and lil mike's hold on the Beltway marquee... Here is Mikey's profound take on the Demonrats' concerted attacks on John Boehner:

PLAYBOOK FACTS AS LIFE: The basis of this spat is as confusing as it is obscure: The plan they're discussing probably couldn't get out of the Senate, anyway. But the opportunistic White House plans to keep pushing this attack - hard. And aides contend that the offensive vindicates their strategy of elevating Boehner. They built him up; now they can try to tear him down.

--A top operative e-mails after a few glasses: “This is political jujitsu at the highest level --- use ur opponents weight when he tries to punch you to pull him over you and put him on his back then quick punch to the adam's apple.”

It's already been noted of the desperation of an MSM which is seeing its Chosen Won going down the tubes to the apt repository of his thoughts/words/deeds. The desperation of the Demonrats to elevate John Boehner, an essentially colorless backroom pol of the old school, to some sort of superdemon, only then to knock him of their phony scaffolding they call a "pedestal," demonstrates just how totally frothing at the mouth the desperate Demonrats are.

And now that ANY discussions using the terms "stimulus" and "healthcare" are off the Demonrat playscript, will anyone in the so-called MSM dare to point out that both are in the negative 60% range in popularity???

How the USA is being Flushed Down the Tubes by Obama and his Bolshie Buddies

The NYT's
David Brooks writes obliquely about the "genteeling of America" which whines a bit that Americans don't relish infrastructure and production jobs, but yearn for high-revenue prestige jobs like the law, investment banking, real estate brokering, and other service industry jobs with high income potential.

Another recent approach was Michael Lewis's hilarious article on Greece and its humongous $12 trillion deficit, which the feckless Hellenes have decided is the fault of a few monks on Mount Athos, a virtually inaccessible peninsula where men live 9th c. lives without any females, even chickens, allowed in the monastery precincts. As Lewis explains, 3 out of 4 jobs in Greece are somehow related to the government and not paying taxes is the national pastime---NOBODY pays taxes and if you are chased for tax money, you take it to court and the adjudication usually lasts a decade. NOBODY is accountable and the Greek deficit became possible when they fudged the numbers to enter the EU and the ever-gullible Germans kept feeding the dragon.

Now the unions are threatening the socialist PM, who is actually more of a capitalist than his Conservative Ponzi Scheme predecessor, with all sorts of retribution, but the conservatives will not go back to rule because they are more responsible than the Papandreou socialists for the Ponzi debacle. I had dinner with George P's brother when he was at Princeton and their daddy was PASOK PM. Nikos explained that Greece and its economy is simply a gigantic RICO scam.

The joke on the libturds in the USA is that they seem to want to emulate the worst parts of the European economic experience [high guaranteed employment thru govt jobs, shitty govt healthcare with death panels] without imitating the best---cheap nuclear and hydroelectric power in France, Germany, Italy.

If the US lets the SEIU thugs and other unions [Greeks spend 4X what America does on their schools and the students require tutors because the Greek teachers unions won't allow monitoring] to take over education and service industries, we will look like Greece in two score years.

Gay Saudi Diplomat Asks for Political Asylum

An LA Saudi Consulate Official is asking for asylum. He is not only gay, but has a Jewish woman as a friend. If he is recalled, he says he might be subjected to a public execution.

Having served in Saudi Arabia at the American Embassy for five years and known the current Ambassador, H.E. Adel Al-Jubair, for decades, I know that the Saudi in LA is exaggerating, but that he would lose his job in the Foreign Service of the Kingdom, and likely be kept from any future gainful employment inside the Kingdom. He certainly wouldn't be publicly executed, or punished, as the preferred way for the Saudis is to put the dirt under the rug, so to speak.

My guess is that he is wanting to go out with a splurge of publicity, with the maximum amount of high profile attention so that in the off chance that the Saudis want to persecute/prosecute, he would have the attention of the world to shield him from the worst.

Unlike the perverts who run Iran, the Saudis do have some respect for the decent opinion of mankind. They may not condone homosexuality, but like Victorian England, it is practiced by much of the ruling class in an under-the-radar fashion, and unless this fellow does an Oscar Wilde and sues, they may just let him off with a slap on the wrist.

Pope to Go to England to Assist at Newman Beatification, Meet the Queen

This morning I read the New Yorker and John Lanchester's venomous book review of Tony Blair's new autobiography. Of course, the CW nowadays is that Tony's place in history is toast, largely because he supported GWB's courageous decision to rid the Middle East of its abiding curse, the megalomaniac and serial warlord, Saddam Hussein. Lanchester said that the only place religion is mentioned is the penultimate page of the book. Of course, JL doesn't mention why. That's because Tony Blair converted to Catholicism after stepping down from the PM job, and we all know how the Catholic Church is regarded by the Satan worshippers of the Upper West Side who read TNY.

Now the Pope is going to the UK to assist in the beatification ceremony of John Newman, the most brilliant writer of the 19th c. in English and author of the greatest autobiography in the language in any century. An attorney, ugh, named Jack Sullivan in Boston was cured through Newman's intercession, and it is unprecedented for this Pope to go to another country for a beatification. The Pope will meet later this month with the titular head of the Church of England, Queen Elizabeth II, Defender of the Faith, a title Henry VIII "earned" by arguing against Luther before he himself went rogue.

This is unprecedented and the popularity of the "Old Faith" has been rising in England as Catholic Churches are packed on Sunday and Anglican Churches not so much. The German Pope is already making moves to get closer to the Lutheran hierarchy in his native Deutschland, where he is/was a respected philosopher corresponding with the Frankfurt School, including Jurgen Habermas. Now perhaps he can stimulate a greater dialogue with actual Christian prelates among the Anglican elites, as the Anglicans overseas already are far less wobbly on the Ten Commandments than the Dean of Canterbury, who advocates shoplifting and Sharia Law among other eccentricities.

Just One Minute Comments About "What if they gave a Qu'ran Burning and Nobody Came?

Tom Malone has an excellent take on the incredible hype the stenographic US propaganda arm orchestrated by a Cass Sunstein conspiracy giving dictation to the NYT typists of today's "Three Minute Hate." Against American political opponents, not against America's overseas enemies as feebly represented by a Talking Head "imam" from Muslim Brotherhood HQ.

As a fluent [long ago at 4-4] Arabist both in reading and speaking trained by US Dept. of State, I couldn’t agree more that the Qu'ran burning is being hyped to omit the Ground Zeo mosque/nest-of-spies controversy from above the fold in the NYT even though "Pastor Jones"with his Yosemite Sam vibe is as bogus as "imam" Al-Rauf with a poor Omar Sharif imitation. Both are cellar-dwellers in their no-credential race to suck oxygen out of the air.

Indeed, the entire “religion of peace” is predicated on “Islam” the word for submission in Arabic, not only to God, but to his earthly representative, the Caliph, and to the local Qadi, none of which the furtive "Imam" can imitate. I long ago came to the conclusion that Islam is at its core a sort of atavistic form of plunder-driven colonialism, but in the sense of the caravan robbery and quick cattle/camel rustling which had long been a specialty of the Arabian peninsula before Mohammad started marrying six-year olds. Let's just call "Islamophobia" an updated form of anti-Semitism as the Arabs, ironically, are more semitic than the Jews, as Arabs possess no Thirteenth Tribe Turkish admixture of the Khazar variety in their gene pool --- though the Turkish Mamelukes, Seljuks, and later Ottomans did spread more than military rule among their captive Arab population!

As I see it, the Qu'ran burning is the best that the MSM can come up with this election year with a "Foley scandal." No mention by Amanpour or NOW about the stoning of various female "adulterers" in Iran. And as I said, the Ground Zero Mosque climbdown proceeds apace in the newsrooms of the elite political commissars taking dictation from the DNC & the Obolshie WH crew.

This phony “imam” Rauf is a false-flag undercover covert rep of the Muslim Brotherhood and inferentially supports a terrorist oganization like Hamas, blames the US for 911, and the libs blame patriotic Americans when Tea Party patriots critique his extortionate blackmail and fake religious credentials. His “legal arm” CAIR is also a Hamas supporter. Just how far do the libs and Hillarious Clytoon’s State Dept loons expect the American people, as opposed to the lumpenprole libs on the left, to support this travesty of good sense and insult to sane public policy. As a State Dept. trained Arabist, I’m aware that the terrorist minority of the Muslim world will consider this spurious “peace center” a memorial to the triumph of Osama and his suicidal boy-pals. They will consider the cringing cowardice of the libs as final proof that the US can be rolled by using its Fifth Column—called the Demonrat Party—to shirk the national security of the USA.

My guess is that since non-Muslims will not be allowed inside, it will become a “nest of spies,” the euphemism that the delusional half-wits in Iran called the US Embassy back in the day when Ahmedinejad was the gulag chief fo US Embassy women, like my FSO colleague Kathy Koob, whom he hassled over showing her forearms by rolling up her sleeves---read Guests of the Ayatollah.

I agree with the 911 spouse of the murdered fireman who says move it further from the WTC memorial. Al Rauf is the biggest threat to national security in the country. And burning a Qu’ran is NOTHING compared to erecting a memorial to an Islamic “victory” attained by deception, guile, and the dupe-PC idiocy of the Jamie Gorelicks and Janet Napolitanos of this country—add the self-described “mutt” POTUS to that list of security risks at the heart of the US govt. inaction and Obolshie is now showing his tin-ear is worse than we thought. I don't think he wants 8 years in the Oval Office anymore as Sunstein & diversity czar Mark Lloyd are now outed daily on Fox as enemies of the US Constitution.

Ponzi Politics from Madoff "Made Men;" Dems Ask How did we get Here?

We Pelosis are Made like Madoff [with Your Money!]

Nate Silver ponders the Demonrat predicament and scratches his head while asking himself why, and how, the Dems began their slide toward a minority role in the House and possibly even the Senate.

Of course, Nate would never do an Occam's razor exercise like Cueball and note that Obambi simply appears disinterested to the mass of Americans, who have awakened to the realization that they mistakenly gave the inmates the key to the asylum in 2008 [actually starting in 2006 with the Foley blogstorm and other dirty demonrat tricks]. They are now looking for some adult supervision. Here's 538's take:

The reasons for the Democrats’ decline are, as we say in the business, overdetermined". That is, there are no lack of hypotheses to explain it: lots of causes for this one effect. The economy? Sure. Unpopular legislation like health care? Yep. Some “bad luck” events like the Gulf Oil spill? Mmm-hmm. The new energy breathed into conservatives by the Tea Party movement? Uh-huh.

And this hardly exhausts the theories. An inexperienced White House that has sometimes been surprisingly inept at coping with the 24/7 news media cycle? The poor optics associated with Democrats having had a filibuster-proof majority in theory, but not always in practice? All of the above.

These causes can’t be so easily untangled on the basis of polling evidence; there’s really no basis on which to evaluate the competing hypotheses. This is particularly so given that different types of political events aren’t isolated from one another — health care reform might have been unpopular, for instance, but the reason for its unpopularity may ultimately have been the economy.

Silver's underplaying of health care is pilloried as typical demonrat trickery and MSM spermburper chicanery by Jay Cost in realClear article:

...there has been a real danger of losing the House for some time, a danger that predates "Recovery Summer" and goes back to the health care debate.

First of all, the fact that the health care bill is no longer the topic du jour does not mean it is no longer an issue. The real questions are whether the health care bill moved voters away from the Democrats, and whether those voters have since moved back now that the debate is over. The answers are yes - the debate moved voters away from the Democrats; and no - the voters have not come back.....

Cost goes on to explain why health care, opposed by sixty pct. of Americans with an opinion, will continue to be the iron bar in the demonrat house of cards, despite the fact that chief spermburpers and stenographers for the DNC principal crime lords still call it a "plurality" of US citizens opposing health care.

You know, the plan that Nancy Botox assured us we'd like after bypassing committees and the US Senate unconstitutionally or at least parliamentarily avoided a filibuster by Senate Majority Crimelord Harry ["we've lost the war"] Weakreid. The 2000 page monstrosity almost as deformed as Maxine Waters dope-wasted mind or Barbara Boxer's sex life. The one which members had 24 hours to read and zero hours to go over in committee. Cost give the monster the coup de grace:

Democrats ignored the political problem of health care in the fall and winter - arguing that Martha Coakley and Creigh Deeds were bad candidates, that voters had been turned off by the health care bill because of the process, and that they would come around once the many benefits kicked in. Now, they're pointing to the economy as the only significant reason why the party is in trouble.

It would be difficult for any strong partisan to admit that such an accomplishment was so deeply unpopular. Yet the polling is pretty unequivocal on the relationship between the Democrats' fortunes and the health care bill. It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority - Independent voters - began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President's job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

Reconstructing the Democrats' meme, we can fairly say that the economy is a huge problem for the party. Of this, there can be no doubt. We can also say that the stalled recovery denied the Democrats a chance to win back the voters they lost over health care. But the process and passage of health care reform were crucial elements in the story. That's when the party started losing the voters it needs to retain control of the government.

In the immortal words of Voltaire: "Ecrasez l'infame!"

In English, loosely translated, that means "Drop kick that sucker over the transom and into the dumpster where it belongs!"

Obama Body Language Steppin' & Fetching---NOT! Beck Brings Home the Bacon

I'm sucking on dill pickles and I like it...!

Fetching isn't the way Obama appears nowadays. He looks a lot like Jimmy Carter during the 444 days of James Earl's EVER SO CLEVER withdrawal called "The Rose Garden Strategy." Tonight he had four, count 'em, pictures of his family behind him in the Oval Office. But Glenn Beck seems to be ALL body language....! Because the libturds simply don't understand him.

Wag of the day: Sharpton Shrank "Million Man March" to "Dozen Dude Dud."

Douthat of the NYT gave Beck his due, but not the way the morally autistic commenters on his Op-Ed appreciated.... The collection of cynical carnivorous whingers who snark out and berate Douthat for soiling the Op-Ed cloaca with lucidity and a smidgeon of common sense is hilarious. If you want to tickle your cognitive dissonance bone, take a detour to the moral sewers where the Upper West Side mini-Frank-Richie-Rich failed theater reviewers empty their most productive orifices online! If you don't have time to link, the nuts is that they don't like Beck and think he's up to nefarious deeds. But of course, the CBS News team led by trowel-and-spackle-makeup stenographer/reader Katie Couric lead the MSM crew in piercing apercus on the inner profundities CBS has uncovered reBeck rally:

Nancy Cordes: Beck, who is a converted Mormon, likes to call himself a clown, but today he played the role of ring-master, preaching racial tolerance to the nearly all-white crowd. A change in tone from the Fox News host who notoriously called President Obama--
Beck: --a racist.

Not to be out d-bagged, Steve Benen. tireless stenographer and spermburper-in-chief for POTUS Forty Four, scratched his head metaphorically and pronounced himself "confused," this from a Bolshie JournoList Politburo notable in good standing whose incantations normally have the ring of something from God's mouth to Steve's ear. He

"I still haven't the foggiest idea what these folks actually want." Is he really this clueless, or is this just a pose? He considers various possibilities and then shoots them down, beginning with this:

This is about "freedom."
Well, I'm certainly pro-freedom, and as far as I can tell, the anti-freedom crowd struggles to win votes on Election Day. But can they be a little more specific? How about the freedom for same-sex couples to get married? No, we're told, not that kind of freedom.

It's all in this vein. They can't be for American liberties, because they are offended by the Ground Zero mosque. They can't be for opportunity, because they oppose ObamaCare. They can't be for "the values of the Founding Fathers," because they lack a "steadfast commitment to the separation of church and state." They can't be for sacrifice, because they oppose the Bush tax increase. They can't be for truth, because they do not accept doctrinal liberal positions on global warming, ObamaCare, Social Security and judicial philosophy.

"The folks who gathered in D.C. today were awfully excited about something," Benen concludes. "The fact that it's not altogether obvious what that might be probably isn't a good sign."

Not a good sign for Benen, we'd say, because it shows him to be so doctrinaire and intellectually lazy that he cannot even conceive of a reasoned point of view that differs from his own, whether over a longstanding philosophical question like the role of the judiciary or a transitory controversy like the Ground Zero mosque.

Increasingly, it seems that "Heads I win, tails you lose" is the creed of the contemporary liberal.

Steve Taranto ends with this flourish, but I remember back before the Politburo seized liberalism by its cuckolded horns when good liberals actually used the slogan "What's mine is MINE and what's YOURS is negotiable."

Back before American exceptionalism switched "red" and "blue" from the Euro tradition of red=left & blue=right. One of the MSM's little second-story heists in their ceaseless quest to muddy what is clear and soil what is clean===rip us off and claim they are not guilty of intellectual fraud and a dishonest bias toward the sinister side, the evil and twisted left.