Video of the Week

PoliticalMath / 1000Pennies has a great video explaining just how different the debt race has become under President Obama.

The hypocrisy of the left is unbounded.

This is one reason that America is “going to crap” (as they say in my neck of the woods):

Had Senator Dodd been a private citizen, his loans would have entailed charges of .250 and .375 “points”—up-front payments equal to a percentage of the mortgage. Senator Dodd was charged: zero. That saved him about $3,000, but the big money came from reduced interest rates. Senator Dodd’s mortgage rates were knocked down from 4.875 percent to 4.5 percent and 4.25 percent, saving him $75,000. Senators play by their own rules.

Despite the man’s admitted guilt, it’s highly unlikely that Senator Dodd’s constituents will boot him out of office. Why? Because the man is powerful. He brings home the bacon. He’s the incumbent, and the American people are too damn preoccupied with getting fat to pay attention at the voting booth (if they vote at all).

The 17th amendment must be repealed. State legislatures need the power to recall corrupt Senators like Dodd and Conrad. In the mean time…

Senator Dodd will be reforming our banks. Senator Conrad will be minding the budget. Perhaps Senator Dodd can get American taxpayers a sweetheart “Friends of Hu” deal as Senator Conrad helps spend the nation into bankruptcy. As the Senate Ethics Committee ponders these imponderables, we can only wonder if congressional Democrats have lost the ability to blush.

Have a great American day. You earned it. Right?

UPDATE:

Democrat resists subpoenaing VIP mortgage records

House Democrats have declined to subpoena available records that might reveal whether other members of Congress got discounted VIP mortgages from subprime lender Countrywide Financial Corp. similar to the sweetheart deals given Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad.

…

"It's well over a year that this (the Countrywide VIP program) has been known to be going on. We know only a fraction of the names who sought or accepted preferential treatment," he said. "You can't do government oversight if you protect your friends."

No kidding. It’s time for the Justice Department to get involved in this matter. Oh, wait they are were investigating:

It is unclear whether the Justice Department is still investigating Dodd, Conrad or the Countrywide VIP program.

Elana Goldstein, one of Feinberg's lawyers, said Justice Department prosecutors interviewed Feinberg last October but have not contacted her or her client since then.

Looks to me like Barry O might be trying to squash the investigation. After all, he has some experience with unfair scrutiny of personal mortgage deals.

Prediction: No prosecutions in this matter at all. Dodd & company are all reelected. The people of Connecticut go about their lives, oblivious to the mess they helped create in Washington. America continues to slip into the abyss. Yada. Yada. Yada.

Michael Barone lays out the filth of the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program.

…Treasury has repeatedly rejected Barofsky's recommendations to require recipients to report how they are spending public funds and inform the public of the fair market value of all TARP assets. Enough is enough. It's time for Congress to start issuing subpoenas, for people and documents.

Indeed. Why is Treasury fighting transparency?

In the Wall Street Journal today, Gov. Jindal lays out 3 “falsehoods” that Obama pushes about health care reform:

1. If you like your current coverage, you can keep it.
2. Reforms will not diminish the quality of our health care.
3. Reform will reduce government spending on health care, and will not increase the deficit.

I think it’s safe to say that more and more Americans are beginning to agree that Obama is delusional (or lying) about each of these. See the article for Jindal’s rebuttal of the “falsehoods”.

He goes on to lay out a “bipartisan” proposal for health care reform that’s actually pretty reasonable:

• Consumer choice guided by transparency
• Health savings accounts
• Medical lawsuit reform
• “Guidelines” for more portable insurance plans and coverage of more pre-existing conditions
• Insurance pooling for small business and the self employed
• Pay for performance
• Refundable tax credits for the poor

With the exception of the tax credits for the poor and “pay for performance”, I think this is a good plan. The tax credits are unfair and promote class warfare. The “pay for performance” idea needs to be further refined, and it sounds difficult to implement.

Also, I’m also not sure what good “guidelines” will do. If they’re just guidelines, they will probably be ignored. And laws requiring the coverage of pre-existing conditions are likely to put a lot of providers out of business.

Overall, it’s a good beginning. Unfortunately, it would take a miracle to push anything close to this proposal through congress, and I don’t think Pelosi/Obama/Reid would call it “bipartisan” at all.

Be sure to watch Obama tonight for any signs of concession. Riiiiiiiight.

BTW: How many darn primetime spots will Obama get before the networks balk?

Video of the Week

By now, most reasonable people know that President Obama has some issues with telling the truth. This video from the House Republican Conference is a wonderful illustration of his total lack of faith in the intelligence of the American People.

So America, do you feel better now that Change has come to Washington? Suckers.

Today in the Washington Post, I find this doozy in an otherwise decent article by Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie (emphasis mine):

That the administration is now spending millions of dollars to revamp its useless stimulus-tracking site Recovery.gov is one more indication that, post-Bush, the White House still thinks of citizens as marks to be rolled.

Come on. What do you expect? He got elected by fooling a majority of Americans that he was actually qualified to be President. Despite zero executive experience, zero business experience, and barely any experience in the Senate, this man is running our country. It shouldn’t surprise us that he thinks we’re all suckers.

A foreshadow of the 2010 elections in the U.S. perhaps…

Conservatives racing ahead in EU parliament voting

Conservatives raced toward victory in some of Europe's largest economies Sunday as initial results and exit polls showed voters punishing left-leaning parties in European parliament elections in France, Germany and elsewhere.

…

Right-leaning governments were ahead of the opposition in Germany, France, Italy and Belgium, while conservative opposition parties were leading in Britain and Spain.

Of course, “Right-leaning” is not necessarily a good thing - especially in Europe. But this quote actually made me smile:

"Tonight is a very difficult evening for Socialists in many nations in Europe," Martin Schulz, the leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament…

I can’t wait to hear similar words come from the Democrats in 18 months. Doubtful that can happen? Well, here are some of the issues that apparently are helping the conservatives trounce the socialists:

• Immigration
• Lawmaker scandals
• Massive bailouts

Sound familiar?

"People don't want a return to socialism and that's why the majority here will be a center-right majority," he said.

I hope American voters feel the same way in 2010.

Video of the Week

With the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor getting little pushback from the spineless weasels in D.C. that call themselves Republicans, I thought I would help remind them of how President Obama feels about judicial confirmation standards.

Of course, it will do little to change their minds. They don’t really care about the nominee, or the courts, or the fact that she was a member of a blatantly racist Hispanic organization. They only care that opposing her might cost them some Hispanic votes:

"A lot of Republicans are worried that [fighting the Sotomayor nomination] could be the last straw when it comes to the party's ability to reach the Hispanic community," said Robert de Posada, a Latino GOP strategist who said he is advising Republican staff aides on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Republicans are in a very awkward position."

This is not the sentiment of someone that believes in making the best decisions possible for our country. No – this is the sentiment of someone whose primary goal is to stay in power.

It’s not the job of our representatives to stay in power – isn’t that obvious to them? We must stop re-electing these self centered power mongers, and start electing people that will vote on principle every time – regardless of the potential consequences to their own career.

Isn’t that obvious to you?

The last year (or so) has really been frustrating for the climate change nazis, and now this:

In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.

The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific support for the position that the warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented, that its impact on human health and wildlife was positive, and that carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change.

The authors cite thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books that were ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific research that became available after the IPCC’s self-imposed deadline of May 2006.

You can get the entire report in PDF format at the link above. It’s also available on Amazon in hard-copy (but only for very successful capitalists!).

With evidence mounting against anthropogenic climate change, and public opinion rapidly swinging towards skeptical, maybe the GOP leadership will start fighting back against costly environmental regulation that only hurts our economy… nah, not likely.

Video of the Week

Many of the things Obama has done since taking office can be undone (eventually). However, if he’s successful in tearing down our health care system and replacing it with a government bureaucracy, a lot of people are going to suffer needlessly – for a very long time.

Patients United Now (author of this week’s video) does a good job of highlighting some of the suffering that goes on today in countries that already have government-controlled health care.

See also: The Heritage Foundation.