BAILOUT IS DEFEATED BY FREE MARKET CONSERVATIVES

In September 1999, the New York times printed an interesting article. The beginning is quoted here:

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.

This is an excellent article for understanding the source of the current Housing and Economic crisis. It is a prime example of how Government interference in the Free Market never works, always destabilizes, and creates a dependant class (and with this current bailout the dependants are wealthy Millionaires!). When well meaning diversity ideas wrongly applied become public policy, then we create a terrible system that winds up actually seriously hurting (via lost jobs, less credit available, etc.) the very people that the government was supposed to help to begin with. Here is the link:

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

For an alternative to the current Welfare for Millionaires Bailout plan go to:
Newt Gingrich.org

At that link, you can also download the FULL TEXT of the Bailout Bill and read it for yourself. I did read it and it's a mess. Thankfully, the House Republicans along with over 90 Democrats helped to defeat it. This is a great reminder to the arrogant Senate that the founding fathers created TWO chambers of congress for this very reason.

For those who want the Cliff Notes version: Here is a Video News Report:



Think about it! We all live in this country and it's our money they (the Congress) are spending. Thankfully today, we've seen democracy in action. Now, I'm going to sharpen up my Hunting, Fishing, and Farming skills and get ready for the coming economic depression. Sphere: Related Content

IDENTITY POLITICS CONTINUES TO BACKFIRE

Shepherd Smith on FOX News reported (as did the Blog POLITICO) today:

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate " whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” Palin is an opponent of abortion rights and gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, earlier this year after finding out during her pregnancy that the baby had Down syndrome.

Fowler told my colleague Alex Burns in an interview that the selection of an opponent of abortion rights would not boost McCain among many women. “Among Democratic women and even among independent women, I don’t think it helped him,” she said.

Told of McCain's boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: "Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway."

When the Democrat Convention began there was a hint of justice that hasn’t been much discussed even by political pundits. The Clintons rode into Washington almost 16 years ago. It doesn’t seem like a longtime ago, but it is the equivalent to when Barry Goldwater lost and Ronald Reagan won.

Further, favorite Political Pundit, Thomas D. Stamper reports:

It wasn’t enough for the Clintons to occupy the White House. They also needed to occupy the moral high ground. These children of the 1960s were going to right the wrongs of their parents and grandparents except when they were useful as some sort of prop so that Clinton could refer to himself as a child of WWII or the Depression or whatever real challenge his parents generation lived through, he skipped the hard road. His cabinet would look like America, meaning that he would scrape three deep to get a female Attorney General, going all the way to a Miami prosecutor. If you were a minority and a female, the staff of Clinton would refer to you as a "twofer." Jocelyn Elders was the most famous of the twofers according to Clinton insiders at the time. Realistically, it was Clinton’s right as President (according to the US Constitution) to pick who he wanted and let Congress decide if they were qualified, but it did no honor to those chosen to say they were considered for their looks. Isn’t that just what Gloria Steinem didn’t want?

The Clintons brought a lot of baggage into 2008. They probably didn’t think that their “looks like America” stance would be anything but a positive. After all, they were here to let you nominate the first female president. But what happened? Hilary has always been a smart political ideologue and she saw it as her strength. And she decided to run a campaign based on experience and the issues, two things decidedly not superficial. But along comes Barack Obama, a Charismatic, intelligent, and politically savvy candidate who just looks like he should be President according to the Clinton's own standard, which has become the standard of the political left. He’s warm and she’s cold. He’s new and she’d old. But even more important, he comes from a demographic background more victimized than hers, a background less represented in society.

How many times do you think during the debates that Hilary wanted to blurt out that Democrats were choosing symbols over substance? Yeah, and who taught them that? And when would Democrats ever get another chance after all these years of having the radical left spoiling things?

Hilary had her opportunity it 2004 and she skipped it hoping for a wide open race in 2008. She did everything right, even sending her operatives down to Iowa to get the dour Kerry nominated. You could make a case that Hilary’s pragmatic approach to the war could have beat Bush in 2004. She would have easily won the nomination in that crowd, but she ducked it.

The Clintons brought identity politics into the mainstream and finally poetic justice makes them a victim of it.

Now in the most ironic twist of all, the victim centered politics of the left is being used against them by the McCain campaign. Poor Barack Obama cannot even get a word in edge wise since Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated without charges of sexism. It is a shame. The American people would be better served if we would live up to our own ideals during campaigns and judge our potential future leaders not by the color of their skin (or their Gender) but by the content of their character.

Sphere: Related Content

THE "OLD" SOUTH MORE PROGRESSIVE AND CHARMING THAN STEREOTYPE

According to a recent article by AP writer, Jay Reeves a Jewish Community, Group dangles $50K for Jews who move to Ala. town

Larry Blumberg is looking for a few good Jews to move to his corner of the Bible Belt. Blumberg is chairman of an organization offering Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate to Dothan, an overwhelmingly Christian town of 58,000 that calls itself the Peanut Capital of the World. Get involved at Temple Emanu-El and stay at least five years, the group's leaders say, and the money doesn't have to be repaid...

"The biggest thing Dothan has to offer is that it's just a very family-oriented community," said Barnes, who directs a hospital foundation. "Our congregation is very vibrant, and we have a lot of things that we get involved in."

Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith didn't know quite what to expect when she moved to Dothan a year ago to lead the congregation at Temple Emanu-El, which was founded in 1929. She came with her husband, who directs the Jewish community services group.

A Connecticut native, the rabbi halfway expected the Alabama of old with wide-open racism and dirt roads. "The Northeast has a really warped perception of what the South is all about, and I found out it was all wrong," she said. "The South is a wonderful place to be. The people are warm and friendly. There's very little traffic. And best of all, there's no snow."

I grew up in Bonifay, FL about 40 minutes just south of Dothan, AL. For us, Dothan was the "big city." It was the closest place we could drive to see a mall and a movie. What is wonderful about Southern folks is that you'll find them accommodating and very open to new people and individuals. It has been my experience that unlike many left-wing Northerners who will "fight" for whole groups but do very little for a single individual (i.e. homeless) that they see everyday, Southerners will help, and demonstrate compassion through the actions of individual relationships. Just look at the vast migration patterns of recent decades with the North losing population and the South continues to grow. We must be doing something right (no pun intended). Sphere: Related Content

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL, AND NOT ASHAMED OF IT

Peggy Noonan weighs in on the real problem of immigration. Unfortunately she does not offer a solution, and maybe there isn't one.

It's the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all. We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways--in our schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there, in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of Americans. We are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically now. We are assimilating them culturally. Within a generation their children speak Valley Girl on cell phones. "So I'm like 'no," and he's all 'yeah,' and I'm like, 'In your dreams.' " Whether their parents are from Trinidad, Bosnia, Lebanon or Chile, their children, once Americans, know the same music, the same references, watch the same shows. And to a degree and in a way it will hold them together. But not forever and not in a crunch. So far we are assimilating our immigrants economically, too. They come here and work. Good. But we are not communicating love of country. We are not giving them the great legend of our country. We are losing that great legend. What is the legend, the myth? That God made this a special place. That they're joining something special. That the streets are paved with more than gold--they're paved with the greatest thoughts man ever had, the greatest decisions he ever made, about how to live. We have free thought, free speech, freedom of worship. Look at the literature of the Republic: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist papers. Look at the great rich history, the courage and sacrifice, the house-raisings, the stubbornness. The Puritans, the Indians, the City on a Hill. The genius cluster--Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Franklin, all the rest--that came along at the exact same moment to lead us. And then Washington, a great man in the greatest way, not in unearned gifts well used (i.e., a high IQ followed by high attainment) but in character, in moral nature effortfully developed. How did that happen? We fought a war to free slaves. We sent millions of white men to battle and destroyed a portion of our nation to free millions of black men. What kind of nation does this? We went to Europe, fought, died and won, and then taxed ourselves to save our enemies with the Marshall Plan. What kind of nation does this? Soviet communism stalked the world and we were the ones who steeled ourselves and taxed ourselves to stop it. Again: What kind of nation does this?
Only a very great one. Maybe the greatest of all. Do we teach our immigrants that this is what they're joining? That this is the tradition they will now continue, and uphold? Do we, today, act as if this is such a special place? No we don't. American exceptionalism is so yesterday. We don't want to be impolite. We don't want to offend. We don't want to seem narrow. In the age of globalism, honest patriotism seems like a faux pas. And yet what is true of people is probably true of nations: if you don't have a well-grounded respect for yourself, you won't long sustain a well-grounded respect for others.

Sphere: Related Content

DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT IS MOST PARAMOUNT

REPRINTED FROM COLLEGIATETIMES.COM

Lacking a major diversity in ideas
Allison Aldrich, CT Regular Columnist
Monday, September 10; 5:34 PM

In the months after April 16, campuses across the country began scrambling to create programs that encourage diversity and ensure that students have an effective way to report discrimination. To its credit, Virginia Tech has been at the forefront of this movement.
The MOSAIC program was established this year (after a couple years of planning) with the purpose of creating dialogue between participants about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, political views and numerous other differentiating characteristics.
We also now have SafeWatch, a program launched to reduce harassment and encourage harmony among all groups. These new measures show that as a community we are taking positive steps to support diversity in all its forms among the student body. Despite this progress, I believe the campus has fallen short in promoting the diversity of opinions among professors and in the classroom.
Many professors proudly place "Safe Zone" stickers on their doors, promising that their office is a place free from discrimination regardless of whether a student is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Students should never feel threatened or intimidated by entering a professor's office just because of their sexual orientation. Having said that, how do conservative students feel when they meet with professors whose doors are plastered with bumper stickers, political cartoons and news articles, all of which make fun and are intolerant of their political views?
Students enter college hoping to expand their horizons and learn from the knowledge and experiences of others. We all expect to discover and reflect on new theories and concepts that will help mold us into unique and thoughtful individuals. The diversity essential in the learning process includes hearing from people with all different ideological viewpoints — not just ones based on differences in skin color or sexual orientation.
I doubt you can find an argument that communism, for example, should never be taught in classrooms just because as a political ideology it is responsible for more deaths of its own citizens than any other form of government. Likewise, socialism should be taught, but not because a professor believes it to be a better form approach than "evil" capitalism. It's one thing to teach various political theories, but it's quite different when a professor becomes the champion of an ideology or the scold for political or economic views he or she does not favor.
When a diversity of ideas is absent among professors at Tech, a great disservice is done to students. When professors become apologists, where is the education?
A recent report by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign contributions, exposes the liberal-leaning bias of academia in America. The report states, "College professors and others in the education field have contributed more money than the oil industry and drug makers, with the nearly unanimous goal of putting a Democrat in the White House." Professors should be allowed to support whomever they wish, but when 76 percent of professors' political donations are going to Democrats, I begin to wonder where the conservative representation is in academia.
Many people today seem to think college campuses are one-party environments, and the statistics seem to bear that out. Are colleges places of learning for students who are hungry for knowledge so that they can make informed choices? Or, have they become cushy soapboxes-for-life for tenured professors with a political agenda?
Personally, I have made it through two years as a political science major without being assigned one conservative book to read. Although I have become well acquainted with Marxist thought, had an entire exam devoted to Watergate, and read countless essays against our foreign policies in the Middle East, I have yet to discuss F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Frédéric Bastiat or any other influential conservative thinker in any political science class I have taken.
It is encouraging to see Tech embracing programs that promote diversity on campus. I hope that we can begin to make the same strides with intellectual diversity and create a community where politics, economics, and other such ideas can be intelligently debated no matter what ideology a professor might hold true. Sphere: Related Content

GOD AND THE ACADEMIC WORLD

Late one winter afternoon in Chicago during my graduate school days, a terrible blizzard arose. I sat in the classroom along with my fellow classmates listening to a lecture from our professor and watching the snow come down in white sheets. Then about a third of the way into our class, a tremendous thunderclap arose. Very unusual to hear thunder during a snowstorm. The class grew very tense. As is my nature in such a time, I made a joke. "Wow, God must be angry." There were a few snickers, but instead of the Professor moving on or rolling his eyes and dismissing my rude interruption, he stopped his lecture and immediately launched into a very different lecture. He began in his crisp English accent, with an air of condescending self-importance, "You see Steven, what has obviously happened is that a warm air mass has just bombarded this cold air front we are now seeing that is causing both this precipitation..." and on and on and on and on he went for at least 15 minutes talking about all the scientific knowledge he could remember on meteorology and perhaps trying to explain away his own anxiety (and this was supposed to be a psychology course?). After he was finished he smiled and looked at me and said, "What to you think of that Steven?"

"Wow, God must be really smart to know how to do all that." I said as the class burst into uncontrolled laughter.

True story. But it expresses the depth many in the academic world will go to quite those who believe. Ironically, their disbelief is felt with more of a fervent zeal than most religious adherents. Ben Stein, in his movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", has done a great service to all those who feel the same and have experienced persecution or ridicule for their beliefs. The move doesn't ask you to believe, but merely asks, why can't I question? Why are some questions or some lines of thought not allowed in some academic environments and universities? My little story above, is certainly the merest vapor of a hint of what others have experienced. I've been very blessed to have a supportive environment to teach my classes and express my questions as I saw fit. Truly I feel academically free. But many other professors, particularly those who want to ask questions about intelligent design do not have that freedom or luxury. May God be with those who truly believe and those who choose not to.


Sphere: Related Content

BARACK CAN SAY IT, BUT CAN YOU?

It is interesting to listen to Barack Obama discuss a subject that when others have brought it up, they have been called "racist" or "traitors." From the Associated Press:

CHICAGO — Barack Obama celebrated Father’s Day by calling on black fathers, who he said are “missing from too many lives and too many homes,” to become active in raising their children.

“They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it,” the Democratic presidential candidate said Sunday at a largely black church in his hometown.

Reminding the congregation of his firsthand experience growing up without a father, Obama said he was lucky to have loving grandparents who helped his mother. He got support, second chances and scholarships that helped him get an education. Obama’s father left when he was 2.

“A lot of children don’t get those chances. There is no margin for error in their lives,” said Obama, an Illinois senator.

“I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle — that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my girls,” added Obama, whose daughters, Sasha and Malia, and his wife, Michelle, watched from the audience.

In my first child development class in my Doctoral program we read a terrible book entitled, "There are No Fathers Here" about the plight of two young boys in the intercity Chicago housing projects (now which have been torn down). After reading the book and being a new father I simply asked myself, "Where is their father?" It seemed to me that my own sons would have been in an equally dire situation had I abandoned them at birth. However, through hardwork, family support and committment to my responsibilities, my sons are thriving. When I brought this fact up in class, I was nearly kicked out of school for my obvious "racist" ideas. Wow! It's nice to be proven correct, even if it is 15 years after the fact. What I was saying and what Barack is saying now, are about the same, in fact Barack Obama is even more harsh than I was.

Recently, Juan Williams NPR commentator in his book "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It " comments about this issue. Bill Cosby also had much to say on this subject at the NAACP meeting last year and was labeled a "traitor."

So how is it that Obama is now being cheered for his "leadership" on this issue? Sphere: Related Content