by Alex Gimarc                                Mon., February 23, 2009

Interesting Items 2/23 -

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Mortgages
2. Rahm
3. Cowards
4. ACORN
5. Stevens
6. Burris

1. Mortgages. Not being satisfied with crashing the stock market and putting the banking and lending industry out of business, President Barack Hussein Obama turned his energies upon the housing market last week. Obama proposed rescuing the housing market by destroying it. He wants to help out 9 million of the people with worst mortgages – people who got loans that never had the ability to pay those mortgages off or people that were buying homes to flip them. The dollar total for this runs about $75 billion. Those of us that have played by the rules, done the right thing, and have faithfully paid our mortgages, will now get to pay for the mortgages of people that are living in homes they never should have purchased. There is nothing in this proposal that addresses the problem of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. There is nothing in this proposal that will repeal the Community Reinvestment Act or get ACORN out of the business of strong-arming lenders to make home loans to people that cannot afford what they want to purchase. And the proposal does nothing to repeal the SarBox mark to market rule. Someone did the math last week and said the proposal amounts to just over $8,000 per mortgage – which is nice as a one-time wealth transfer, but will do absolutely nothing to remove these toxic assets from the financial system. Public reaction from the political right has been to pan the proposal. The stock markets celebrated the proposal by tanking another few hundred points. The housing bubble was artificially inflated and as it has burst, home values nationwide are falling back to their historic levels. We won’t know where that level will end up being as long as the Obama administration continues to muck around in the housing market. The sooner they get out of the way, the sooner this entire mess will work itself out. I have little sympathy for the house flippers. I have slightly more sympathy with those that are in homes they cannot afford. I have absolutely no sympathy for those that got their home loans via ACORN shakedown threats to the banks and lending institutions. Looks like it is going to be a good time to buy a house as the bubble pops.

2. Rahm. Yet another week; yet another high ranking Obama administration official with a tax and campaign contribution problem. It turns out that Obama’s brain – WH Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was living in Washington DC for free while he was in congress and did not report the free lodgings as income on his tax statement. This appeared to be quid pro quo b arter arrangement, as Emanuel got to live in the basement of Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D, CN) for several years without paying rent, while he tossed polling and research contracts to DeLauro’s husband totaling over $500,000 in 2007 and 2008. Emanuel was head of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee at the time. Not only does it appear that the WH Chief of Staff has violated the tax laws, but it also appears that he has violated some provisions of campaign finance laws. Is there anyone in the Obama administration that pays his taxes and follows the law? Perhaps this is why Obama wanted Judd Gregg (R, NH) in his administration to lend diversity as one of the few taxpaying appointees. WND, Tues.

3. Cowards. Newly confirmed Attorney General Eric Holder took the occasion of Black History Month to opine that we were a nation of cowards because we did not want to have an honest conversation on race. While incredibly offensive, Holder demonstrates quite plainly that his experience as a limousine liberal, attendee at some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the nation, has poorly prepared him for life in the real world. Message to Eric: most of us don’t want to have an honest conversation about race because most of us simply don’t care about race. To the vast majority of Americans, it just doesn’t matter. Why discuss something, explore the deepest nooks and crannies of the psyche looking for something that simply doesn’t exist at any meaningful level in our daily lives? The only people who really care about race are those that profit from it – people like the Jesse Jackson / Al Sharpton / ACORN race-baiting shakedown operators; people like La Raza or MALDEF, who profit from separating Hispanics from the rest of the body politic; people like the Hawaiian native separatists who are well on their way to creating a race-based tribal entity in a place where none existed before; people who gain and maintain political power by scraping off the scabs, reopening the scars and wounds of long forgotten racial problems in this country; people who look at their neighbors and think of their color and victim group membership before they think of anything else; people like you, Mr. Holder; people of the left.

4. ACORN. Speaking of ACORN, an ACORN sponsored “civil disobedience” operation in Baltimore led to a mob stealing a foreclosed home from the bank that owns it. The woman who lost the house was unwilling to pay what she promised after several attempts by the lender to restructure the loan. She eventually moved out. ACORN took it as a cause celebe, chose her as the designated victim, and marched the goons and thugs against the empty home, claiming that is “… our home now.” So much for property rights in the Age of Obama. So much for the rule of law. It appears that ACORN is poised to provide the goons and muscle at the street level to implement the “change” Obama and the fascist congress is promising. Buy guns. Many years ago, rock salt out of a twelve gauge shotgun works nicely. Today, so will bird shot or BBs. Malkin, Weds.

5. Stevens. Last week, the Justice Dep artment Public Integrity section replaced their prosecution team in the Stevens corruption trial. The action was in response to contempt charges against three of the Justice Dep artment prosecutors and their supervisors for refusing to turn over 33 documents to the defense. Additionally, the court is working its way through FBI whistleblower charges of prosecutorial misconduct and inappropriate contact between their chief witness, Bill Allen and members of the prosecution team before and during the trial. The Incredibly Shrinking Fishwrapper (Anchorage Daily News) ran an extended article Monday that attempted to downplay the prosecutorial abuse, wave off the FBI whistleblower concerns by referring to him as a young, inexperienced agent, and supporting the integrity of both the freshly replaced team of federal prosecutors and the process that denied Stevens’ defense access to evidence gathered before and during the trial. Eventually this pro-Begich cheerleading is going to go too far.

6. Burris. The newly appointed junior senator from the “Great” State of Illinois, Rolland Burris is in a spot of trouble following release of an affidavit made during the Blago investigation. Burris “forgot” to mention that he had a conversation with Blago’s brother, in which he was pressed to raise $10,000 in campaign funds. This conversation took place before Burris was appointed to the senate, putting Burris in the interesting position of committing perjury in his remarks to the Illinois legislature. Remember that Burris previously submitted an amended affidavit about his contacts with Blago’s people. The amended affidavit was submitted three weeks after he was sworn into the senate. There are Republican members of the Illinois legislature calling for his resignation. Now that the democrats in the US Senate have his vote on the stimulus package, Burris appears expendable, with Dick Durbin (D, IL) calling for his resignation over the weekend. Is there anybody in Illinois that is clean?

More later –

           - AG

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.