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10月29日 French SlipThe French Foreign Minister slipped up and called a Russian spade a spade where its agression towards Georgia is concerned. Check out the article here. Images from a Horrible Slice of LifeTwo cars, moving in opposite directions, each going about 45, both trying to use their turn lane to get around traffic. A head-on collision. Two life flight air ambulances on the scene. Lots of blood, glass, and oil. Somebody moves the unharmed eight year old girl dressed in the red-splattered pink blouse into the toy store so she won’t see her mangled daddy being loaded into the helicopter. Trying to figure out who she is so we can call her mother, hoping that she can come quickly. Praying to God that my daughter never, ever experiences anything like this. Later, lots of tears and fervent prayers. Un-Fairness DoctrineRumors are circulating that the Democrats are trying to hoist themselves by that old petard, the cynically named Fairness Doctrine, after they re-take the White House.
Look - if I were a Democrat - which I am not, because I at least pretend to have some sort of moral structure - I would die of embarassment if one of the issues my party is known to champion, Free Speech, was attacked by that same party. I mean, it's just embarassing. Traditionally it has been the Republicans who want to limit freedom of political speech by passing constitutional amendments against flag burning and such. But I guess the success of conservative talk radio (something I avoid like the plague, by the way), combined with the apparant fact that there isn't much of a market for liberal talk radio since outside of the freaks at Pacifica, has pissed off the Dems so much that they are trying to regulate political speech under the guise of fairness.
Look, guys - it's pretty simple. Political speech should not be regulated outside of occasional zone and safety concerns, and even those should be very limited. End of story. Stop making yourselves look hypocritical on one of the few issues that makes you look rational (to a rational person). Democrat Engineering and the Credit Crisis - Let's Play the Blame Game!From Open Secrets: Uh-oh! Looks like the Libtards were on the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Dole! Note that Barry Obama comes in third on the list of recipients.... it's a good thing that Barney Frank was sleeping with one of Fannie's executives (Herb Moses) and passing legislation at his bequest, or he might have been in a position to frown on this. Finally, here is a very good video documenting Democrat culpability for this mess. I especially recommend it to Bryan! Oh, and look, here's another video documenting how the Bush Administration, of all things, tried to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the Democrats shut them down. Yeah, yeah, harp about Phil Gramm and Glass-Steagal somewhere else.Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Democrats(For an updated chart that includes contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's PACs and employees to ALL lawmakers back to 1989, including to their leadership PACs, go here.) and data The federal government recently announced that it will come to the rescue of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two embattled mortgage buyers that for years have pursued a lobbying strategy to get lawmakers on their side. Both companies have poured money into lobbying and campaign contributions to federal candidates, parties and committees as a general tactic, but they've also directed those contributions strategically. In the 2006 election cycle, Fannie Mae was giving 53 percent of its total $1.3 million in contributions to Republicans, who controlled Congress at that time. This cycle, with Democrats in control, they've reversed course, giving the party 56 percent of their total $1.1 million in contributions. Similarly, Freddie Mac has given 53 percent of its $555,700 in contributions to Democrats this cycle, compared to the 44 percent it gave during 2006.
10月15日 Bill Maher is a HypocriteBill Maher, with his new mockumentary of religion, really seems to think he is smart. He's always been a smug, arrogant bastard. Behold the hypocrisy from this WSJ article: "On Oct. 3, Mr. Maher debuts "Religulous," his documentary that attacks religious belief. He talks to Hasidic scholars, Jews for Jesus, Muslims, polygamists, Satanists, creationists, and even Rael -- prophet of the Raelians -- before telling viewers: "The plain fact is religion must die for man to live." But it turns out that the late-night comic is no icon of rationality himself. In fact, he is a fervent advocate of pseudoscience. The night before his performance on Conan O'Brien, Mr. Maher told David Letterman -- a quintuple bypass survivor -- to stop taking the pills that his doctor had prescribed for him. He proudly stated that he didn't accept Western medicine. On his HBO show in 2005, Mr. Maher said: "I don't believe in vaccination. . . . Another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur [germ] theory." He has told CNN's Larry King that he won't take aspirin because he believes it is lethal and that he doesn't even believe the Salk vaccine eradicated polio." Nice.
10月3日 Clinton, the Community Reinvestment Act, and the Current Credit CrisisWant to know where this mess started? Then read this New York Times article of nine years ago. Note especially the blod section.
By STEVEN A. HOLMES Published: 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. |
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