Here is another video that shows how democrat policies, including the actions of Barack Obama, led us to the current financial crisis. Ed Morrissey breaks it down here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64

Forward it along to all of your friends. Previous videos are here, here, and here.

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.”
Andrew Jackson

Have a good look at what is happening in DC now.

This is the mess you get when the balance isn’t. It isn’t Donks and Republicants.It is Liberals and RINO’s voting to spend like drunks on social programs with no accountability; robbing one program to pay for another.

Now that Congress put the taxpayer out to dry, from where comes the money to pay for Medicare which is in the hole now. Social Security which is teetering on the edge and the prescription drug plan, you remember the one EVERYBODY clamored for, is in the red zone from the start.
Liberals and RINO’s, tell me your plan to pay the interest on T-Bills held by other countries? What are you going to do if they wish to cash in to ease their problems?
Now to the banking mess.

The fiasco we face does have a beginning and a time line of a perceptibly short duration.
We only look back to 1988, to a Democrat controlled congress. There is some Republican complicity too, in the FED by Greenspan and in Treasury. We need some names at which to point fingers; here is an ample supply. For the chimpy Loveable Liberal ALL are annotated to save you calling out bias, racist or liar. Makes the info easy for you, links to the WaPo, which as we know, is NOT biased.
Here’s the progression.

In 1990, the Fed, under former J.P. Morgan director Alan Greenspan, permitted guess who–J.P. Morgan–to become the first bank allowed to underwrite securities. [snip]
Four legislative attempts were made to weaken or repeal parts of Glass-Steagall from 1988-1996. One reason they failed is because smaller banks feared that opening the doors to allow banks to trade in securities would lead to the domination of larger banks–a fate that has come to pass.
The biggest change came in 1996 when Alan Greenspan issued a ruling allowing bank investment affiliates to have up to a quarter of their business in investments. [snip]

In 1986 a young man named Sanford Weill grew bored with Wall Street and purchased one of these subprime lenders, Commercial Credit, a loan company based in Baltimore. In his paper “Banking on Misery Citigroup, Wall Street, and the Fleecing of the South,” Michael Hudson notes Weill drove employees to sell more. [snip]
This kind of practice resulted in multiple lawsuits that surfaced in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hudson cites one example:

Jackson, Miss., attorney Chris Coffer says, he obtained confidential settlements for about 800 clients with claims against Commercial Credit or its successor, CitiFinancial.

Starting with Commercial, Weill began wheeling and dealing until a little over a decade later he would head the largest financial institution in the world.

The Repeal of Glass Steagall

In the background of the go-go economy, the feeling grew among some economists and the financial community that Glass-Steagall hampered America’s financial competitiveness. Among the many voices favoring this was Alan Greenspan along with former Goldman Sachs partner Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. In a 1995 speech and testimony to Congress Rubin signaled the Clinton Administration was ready to repeal Glass-Steagall:

“The banking industry is fundamentally different…[]…domestically, the separation of investment banking and commercial banking envisioned by Glass-Steagall has eroded significantly.”

Anyone who thinks the repeal of Glass-Steagall was forced on an unwilling Bill Clinton need only read Rubin’s testimony. A year later Sandy Weill set in motion the forces that would finally end Glass-Steagall. [snip]

Of course a NY Times photo of the event is with Clinton smiling is worth how many words?

Weill proposed the most audacious financial merger of in American history: he would merge one of the largest insurance companies (Travelers), one of the largest investment banks (Salomon Smith Barney), and the largest commercial banks (Citibank) in America. The problem was the merger was illegal in terms of Glass-Steagall. Independent Community Bankers of America CEO Kenneth Guenther captured the audacity of the deal in an interview with Frontline:

Here you have the leadership — Sandy Weill of Travelers and John Reed of Citicorp — saying, “Look, the Congress isn’t moving fast enough. Let’s do it on our own. …[]… And they pulled this off with the blessings of the president of the United States, President Clinton; the chairman of the Federal Reserve system, Alan Greenspan; and the secretary of the treasury, Robert Rubin.
And then, when it’s all over, what happens? The secretary of the treasury becomes the vice chairman of the emerging Citigroup.

Talk about a sinecure.
Then we have this marvelous statement from the bozo Rubin;

Curiously, one of those converts is none other than Robert Rubin who has stated:

If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.

Since it was Rubin who played a major role in the deregulation this statement is nothing short of incredulous.
As the record shows, Rubin had a great deal to regret. [snip]

(The link in the quote goes to Paul Krugman who has an antenna full of pigeons)
Before you say it, yes, Gramm was the Chairman of McCain’s committee since tossed off the campaign.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Phil Gramm, House Banking Committee chair James Leach, and Virginia Representative Thomas Bliley introduced bills in the Senate and House under the benign-sounding name of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, becoming the key sponsors of the bill as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act,
The Senate voted on this and it passed. Biden voted for the repeal, McCain didn’t vote. 90-8 was the roll call in favor.
Finishing up, here are some questions I’d like answered.
Obama has already stated he would not reinstate Glass-Steagall. When asked Barack Obama notes:
Well, no. The argument is not to go back to the regulatory framework of the 1930’s because, as I said, the financial markets have changed substantially.
Also, four of Obama’s top six contributors include Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and–guess who–Citigroup. Another biggie, Fannie Mae fat cat Franklin Raines chatting up the Obamoe although the Obamoe lies about it. (Get it here in the WaPo)

This mess is getting tougher, not easier and still may crush the economy. While we wait, perhaps Hillary might tell us what she thinks of the repeal of Glass-Steagall; Would she roll back the repeal? It is a toss up between Monica and this for the greater ignominy.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said that Hillary Clinton should not run for vice president on a ticket with Barack Obama because her husband, former president Bill Clinton, could cause problems for the new administration.

“If she got back into the White House, she’d bring along Big Daddy, and he would overshadow the president,” Menino said in an interview.

That must be the first time I have ever agreed with Menino.

The media can’t explain Bill Clinton’s fall from grace:

It’s going to be tougher for her husband. The most talented and resilient politician of this generation has damaged his standing with gaffes, political miscalculations and a series of paranoiac, volcanic eruptions.

A common question these days among political heavyweights — including longtime Clinton devotees — is this: How can a guy this smart act so dumb?

The “most talented” politician of his generation never exceeded 50% of the popular vote in either of his presidential runs. And that was with Ross Perot undermining the Republicans on both occasions. His presidency is largely devoid of any long-term, legacy building policy wins. He faced few real challenges, and the major decisions he did make, like ignoring bin Laden and terrorism, were completely incorrect. At best, he was a philanderer, and at worst, he was a rapist. His campaign took money from the Chinese and provided the technology corridor through which their nuclear capabilities soared. And all the while his administration and wife aimlessly bounced from one scandal to another.

The media built the Clinton mystique not on fact, but their own thankfulness that he’d delivered them from 12 years of Republican presidents. Bill Clinton didn’t wake up stupid yesterday. He’s always been this way. It just wasn’t convenient to admit it then.

The media is far to busy building castles in the clouds for Barack Obama to be bothered with Bill Clinton. That explains Bill’s bitterness at the press far more than anything else.  It’s tough going from number one to also ran.

This doesn’t show a great track record of Progressive largess. True to form however, they talked about it so that’s what matters.
Take note that the Clinton’s filed an extension; this allows for “corrections” to the tale if she wins the nomination. If not, no more forms see the light of day! I wonder if the underwear deduction is there?

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton released tax data Friday showing they earned $109 million over the last eight years, an ascent into the uppermost tier of American taxpayers…[snip]

The idea that charity begins at home seems to be the Clinton motto.

During that time, the Clintons paid $33.8 million in federal taxes and claimed deductions for $10.2 million in charitable contributions. The contributions went to a family foundation run by the Clintons that has given away only about half of the money they put into it, and most of that was last year, after Mrs. Clinton declared her candidacy. [snip

“Now don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against rich people,” she said. “As a matter of fact, my husband, much to my surprise and his, has made a lot of money since he left the White House, by doing what he loves doing most — talking to people. But we didn’t ask for George Bush’s tax cuts. We didn’t want them, and we didn’t need them.”

But they made sure they took the deductions. Much akin to Warren Buffet belief Americans should pay more taxes. He didn’t write any extra checks either.
Like most Liberals, when it comes to action, the only part moving is the mouth.

The length of the Democratic Primary is forcing them to stay honest.  In a normal primary, the Democratic candidate would be masking their far left-wing agenda by running to the center.  For example, Bill Clinton promised a middle class tax cut during the ’92 campaign.  Once elected, that tax cut turned into the largest increase in history.

But this election season they don’t have that luxury.  For example, Barack Obama would never be this honest about his disdain for tax cuts if he weren’t still pandering to left-wing voters in the primary: 

“You got a problem with health care: tax cuts. You got problem with education: tax cuts. You got a problem with the economy: tax cuts. Poverty: tax cuts. That’s not a policy, it’s a dogma, a tired and cynical philosophy,” Obama told a crowd of over 17,000.

Hold on to your wallets during an Obama presidency.  Every “solution” he offers on the campaign trail includes more spending, which means less money for you and your family because of higher taxes.  Just replace “tax cuts” with “more taxes” in his quote to get an even more accurate picture of where Barack is coming from.

Barack is going to “unite” us by making us poor.  It’s certainly what you’d expect from the nation’s most liberal senator.

‘Great Distaste’ in Belgrade

Our Embassy Is Burned Over Kosovo

[snip]
Yesterday, as the American Embassy in Belgrade burned, the Associated Press reported that vigilantes set afire a U.N. vehicle in the Serb minority province of Mitrovica on the border between Kosovo and Serbia. Meanwhile, a United Nations-run court building in the province came under attack again from protesters throwing rocks, in what could be an effort from the Serb minority to impose a de facto secession from the newly independent Albanian majority country. [snip]

The street protests are a bitter irony for Mr. Clinton’s foreign policy team especially, considering that the last time protests of that size were seen in Belgrade was in 2000, when Prime Minister Kostunica led marches on the parliament that ultimately forced Milosevic to give up power.

In 2000, Mr. Kostunica was praised as a liberal visionary in Washington. Today he is leading crowds of Serbs in Belgrade insisting that Kosovo remain part of Serbia. [snip]

Maybe we should send in the Archduke to settle this mess.

The flood of articles extolling the virtues of civility and bipartisanship are starting to make me ill.  The last “shamnesty” bill was a bipartisan effort that stopped just short of making the nation of Mexico eligible for welfare.  But hey, some dopey Republicans supported it, so it was “bipartisan”.

But I don’t vote for Republicans so they can get friendly with Ted Kennedy.  I want principled people who know how to fight.  I want stark contrasts and choices.  Make it a choice between a 100% beef hamburger and a veggie burger I say. 

However, homogenized, flavorless politics are all the rage today.  Well, at least the media is in love with the idea.  Of course, the media’s idea of bipartisan is RINOs voting with Democrats. 

And speaking of RINOs, Bill Clinton thinks that John McCain has the bipartisan bug too: 

“She and John McCain are very close,” Clinton said. “They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they’re afraid they’d put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other.”

Those Clintons sure are nice people.  Just ask Barack Obama how “civilized” they are when somebody stands between them and elective office.  Their idea of civilized is hitting someone upside the head with a 2 x 4.  John McCain won’t know what hit him when these 2 smack him during the general election. 

And although I don’t admire the Clintons, I certainly do admire their tenacity, and wish we had some stronger conservatives on our team.  Look at the Democratic choices for just a second and you see 3 committed socialists.  I don’t see one committed conservative on the Republican side.

US braces for baby boom retirement wave

The first of the vast US baby boom generation goes into retirement in January, setting off a demographic tidal wave with wide-ranging economic, political and social implications. [snip]

The cost for government-funded social security and medical care for the boomers leaves a funding gap of between 40 and 76 trillion dollars for next 75 years, according to various estimates. [snip]

Leonard Steinhorn, an American University professor and author of “The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy,” says the generation often wrongly maligned as latte-sipping Yuppies has transformed most of American society.

They sure fooled the rest of the world, didn’t they? Wasn’t the Bonfire of the Vanities their signature piece?

He wrote that boomers have led or sustained most of “the great citizen movements that have advanced American values and freedoms — the environmental movement, the consumer movement, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the diversity movement, the human rights movement, the openness in government movement.”

For the civil rights movement, they cannot have credit. They didn’t do that. As for the enviro and women’s movement they can have these, no one else wants credit for those debacles.

He told AFP he expects this transformation to continue as boomers age. “It’s not going to be a generation that’s going to go off to the golf courses and do nothing.”

Of course not, with tanning salons, fern bars and of course spinning classes, there will be no time for the golf course. Tossing  in the requisite nail wrap and the odd Botox shot gives quite a grueling day. How will they ever cope with that schedule?

He said boomers will push politics to a more progressive bent even though that has not yet happened because the more conservative over-60 generation still carries much weight in the electorate.

“Once younger voters begin to replace them, the socially conservative vote will dwindle,” he said. [snip]

The boomer generation is hardly monolithic. For the left side, Hillary is the guidon, so can you spell passé?

                       Stay away from me.  Go CARE about someone else.

In 1992, when Bill Clinton said “I feel your pain” to AIDS patient Bob Rafsky during a campaign stop, he seemed to mean it.  And he did, in the same way he felt all the narcissistic sentiments of his various realities to come.  We learned that, as he continued to emote and feel things during his priapic presidency, the facts and values of his emotions varied a great deal.  But, whatever his faults, Clinton was a lone act; he just wore the comedy and tragedy masks and didn’t try to institutionalize his pathos.  For that, we have George W. Bush and Compassionate Conservatism.

“Compassionate Conservatism” as a theoretical approach to social problems is the creation of Marvin Olasky, professor/journalist,  former communist, Jewish atheist turned Born Again Christian, Yale grad and former Bush advisor.  The term derives from Olasky’s study of the relative successes of government and private programs in relieving the effects of poverty throughout American history.  Olasky’s ideas and conclusions were the basis for faith-based initiatives, some of them adopted by GWB as governor to Texas and later as President.  

Compassionate Conservatism passed Olasky’s empirical tests.  It had less to do with religion than it did with communitarian possibilities , and almost nothing to do with the administrative state as a dispenser of compassion.  Bush, however, has infused his administration with a soft compassionate conservatism, and pushed the phrase front stage, and  thence into that deplorable family of catch-phrases inflicted upon historians and the public by political dream merchants.   These phrases define eras, visions, goals, national purposes and the evanescent pursuits of political generations, not of “the people” themselves.  

The last full century was fouled by such blinding banalities - New and Fair Deals, New Frontiers, New Convenants, New This, New That, Straight-Talk Express, WIN, and lots more, plus that apotheosis of mawkish liberal romanticism, stewed with a touch of Albert Speer,  The Great Society.  All of them foundered in some way on the shoals of reality.  As vessels for everyone’s different wishes and interpretations, they could never really function as democratic programs.  

As a digression, what the hell was The Great Society?  Someone tell me.  If the New Haven of today, with its brutalist architecture, bloodstains and cement foliage resembles the progressive vision of 1968,  someone needs to be punished for the artwork and the final rendering.  Liberals reduced the faded,  but restorable illuminated script of American urban life to loopy spray-can graffito, not only in New Haven but in every old city in the country because they cared about the inhabitants!   Listen, Uncle Sam.  Wherever I hurt, please don’t touch me there.

The same is true of Compassionate Conservatism, which to me seems to be the spiritual rationale for the President’s  swelling sympathies for anyone who can make it across an American border, to holders of burdensome mortgages, or to a select few who can lay claim to natural rights somewhere across the seas.  Despite Mexican towns emptying of young men, most who never return, despite the  deepening Latin despotism that make it desirable to leave and abandon hope of change, despite tyrannical stasis in the Middle East among our allies, our indiscriminate goodness survives the contradictions and goes looking for another heart to heal.   And we haven’t even gotten to sub-prime borrowers and their angst.

Now Bush is  waxing sympathetic about injustice in Myanmar, which is not a moral gradient he needs to scale to remain compassionate, and which fades into insignificance anyway in the shadows of monstrous injustices in Africa and the Middle East.  No doubt Rice can make a compassionate case for the Burmese/Myanmaris who must be saved by the ameliorative West.  It’s lunacy. There’s a natural limit to caring; it’s cheap, its reality is unknowable, and conservatism is not about pain, its  simply about liberty and justice for all.   You don’t attain either of these things by sloshing in sentimentality. 

With George Bush we got prescription drug subsidies,  support for affirmative action, a volcano of dollars for the orgy of corruption and graft that followed the genuine suffering of Katrina,  open borders, and Bush’s promotion of his four C’s of “civility, courage, compassion and character” (First Inaugural Address),  but not a word about The Constitution or his governing philosophy.  When you have no governing philosophy to defend as President, just a boundless heart,  then the office is your personal hair shirt.  The last time we went down this road, we got the constipated spirituality and crabbed pieties of Jimmy Carter.  Maybe we’re better off this time.  I’m not sure yet.

Howie Carr’s replacement made a point today that I raised here with a post sometime ago—Barack Obama’s presidential resume is very thin. In fact, he challenged people to name just one Tier 1 presidential candidate with a thinner resume. Even the caller who immediately attacked the guest host as a racist for bringing up Obama’s thin resume couldn’t name one. He tried to say Dubya, but if being a 2 term governor of the nation’s 2^nd largest state doesn’t count as a qualification, how would Bill Clinton merit consideration from Arkansas?

Obama is the affirmative action candidate for president. He launched his career with a speech at the Democratic National Convention, not with exemplary accomplishment or qualification. If you want to make the case that he isn’t getting a pass on his qualifications, I’m all eyes. But if you didn’t know whose resume this was, you wouldn’t be thinking President of the United States. Contrary to what some would have you think, that’s not racist; it’s just a fact.

I feel the same way about Hillary Clinton too. She’s served longer in the Senate than Barack, but is anybody denying that her resume is built primarily on that of her husband? Even her Senate seat was won primarily on Bill’s accomplishments, not hers. It’s not a stellar crowd of Democratic candidates when it comes to qualifications that’s for sure.

Counting on Failure, Energy Chairman Floats Carbon Tax

WASHINGTON, July 6 — A powerful House Democrat said on Friday that he planned to propose a steep new “carbon tax” that would raise the cost of burning oil, gas and coal, in a move that could shake up the political debate on global warming.

The proposal came from Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and it runs directly counter to the view of most Democrats that any tax on energy would be a politically disastrous approach to slowing global warming. [snip]

“I will be introducing in the next little bit a carbon tax bill, just to sort of see how people think about this,” he continued. “When you see the criticism I get, I think you’ll see the answer to your question.” [snip]

Are you not happy to see the Dems putting energy into wasted bills, when they have nothing to show for their tenure so far? With most scientists, now stating climate change is natural, caused by the sun and water vapor, the public sees this type of unadorned thought, wasting productive time.

Republicans, they said, would seize on any such proposal as proof that Democrats were bent on raising taxes and increasing the size of government.

Indeed, many Democrats still cringe at the memory of President Bill Clinton’s trying to pass a broad “B.T.U. tax” in 1993 on most forms of energy. [snip]

Now, House and Senate Democrats are writing bills that would require…tradeable (sic) pollution credits.[snip]

Tradable pollution credits are an indulgence tossed around to garner support for some trashy bill. Pollution once produced exists. If a company that doesn’t pollute, sells the tradable credits to one that does and continues to defile, as before, where is the reduction in effluence? More gaucherie by our Congress as it attempts to show how hard they work for you.

The European Union has adopted a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, though the system has come under considerable criticism for letting companies game the rules and for failing to reduce emissions in line with European goals.

Everyone, from the Stalinists to the “moderates,” believes the EU has all the answers. Were that so, their economies would shrivel our monetary spine. Has not happened, has it.

Fortunately for us, not in that camp are the sangfroid capitalists. In spite of their foreclosing on orphanages, evicting widows and enslaving children, they are working for our country, unlike Congress. Gotta love them!

President Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence today. I haven’t been following the case closely enough to have an informed opinion either way; however, Senator Clinton’s opinion is interesting:

Four years into the Iraq war, Americans are still living with the consequences of this White House’s efforts to quell dissent. This commutation sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.”

As a public service, I’d like to remind her of Bill Clinton’s “cronyism” on the final day of his presidency:

On the very last day of his presidency, Bill Clinton issued pardons for 140 people, including his brother Roger Clinton and former business partner Susan McDougal, who had been jailed for refusing to give evidence against the Clintons in the Whitewater real estate scandal.

Even more controversial was the pardon for financier Marc Rich, who faced more than 50 charges of tax evasion and illegal oil trading - and for whom Libby, coincidentally, had worked as a lawyer.

When it was revealed that Mr Rich’s ex-wife had made large donations to Mr Clinton’s presidential library fund, the outcry was such that a congressional inquiry into Mr Clinton’s final pardons was set up.

Mr Clinton later said the gifts had nothing to do with his clemency but admitted it had been “terrible politics”.

It was “terrible politics”, but the cash and silence were well worth it. At least Libby testified unlike the people involved in the Clinton’s escapades.

Kurt Loder provides a surprisingly balanced look at Michael Moore’s Sicko. Loder points out that Moore completely ignores socialized countries struggles providing medical care too. He ends his piece with this salient point:

As the Caribbean sun sank down on Moore’s breathtakingly meretricious movie, I couldn’t help recalling that when Fidel Castro became gravely ill last year, he didn’t put himself in the hands of a Cuban surgeon. No. Instead, he had a specialist flown in — from Spain.

Yeap. Cuban care is so “good” that Castro won’t use it. The US system has problems, but that doesn’t mean socializing it is the answer. The people holding England and Canada up as models need to take a much closer look and examine those systems honestly. Where did Bill Clinton get treated for his heart condition even though his wife is a huge critic of the US system? How about Mrs. Edwards whose husband is also on the socialism bandwagon?