This happenstance juxtaposition of paragraphs caught my attention

Bear with me. It will be worth it, promise.

• The New York Times takes down the Clinton Foundation (Dr. Tim Stanley, The Telegraph, 8/14/2013):

The cynical might infer from the NYT piece that the Clintons are willing to sell themselves, their image, and even their Foundation's reputation in exchange for money to finance their personal projects. In Bill's case, saving the world. In Hillary's case, maybe, running for president.

It's nothing new to report that there's an unhealthy relationship in America between money and politics, but it's there all the same. While the little people are getting hit with Obamacare, high taxes and joblessness, a class of businessmen enjoys ready access to politicians of both Left and Right that poses troubling questions for how the republic can continue to call itself a democracy so long as it functions as an aristocracy of the monied.

• The Plot to Save America (Andrew C. McCarthy, September 2013):

Despite some 11,539 proposed modifications since the first Congress convened nearly two-and-a-quarter centuries ago, the Constitution has only been formally amended twenty-seven times (and just two times in the last forty-two years—the last in 1992). One must say “formally” because ... the Constitution has been contorted to a fare-thee-well by judicial ukase (which, for example, enables Leviathan to hyper-regulate virtually every item in your home by construing the Interstate Commerce Clause to control intrastate commerce), by ambitious legislative schemes like Obamacare, and by imperious presidents overseeing the vast, metastasizing, and unaccountable administrative state to which Congress has delegated much of its legislative authority.

To roll back this tide is the burden of The Liberty Amendments...

...Although most discussions of separation-of-powers focus on checks and balances among the federal departments, the principal curb on federal power was to be the states. The Constitution, as the Federalist Papers attest, left control over the infinite details of everyday life to the individual and the local government closest and most accountable to him. The federal government was to handle just a few external matters, mainly dealing with national security and foreign relations. To restore that balance, to strip Leviathan back down to size, would take the collective strength and determination of the states...

...No priority is greater than supplanting the entrenched Beltway ruling class. As designed, the Republic’s central government featured citizen legislators, representatives of the people who actually were, well, representative of the people. More out of patriotic duty than financial remuneration, they met infrequently in the nation’s capital—just a few months out of the year—reflective of the fact that the national government’s responsibilities, though vital, were few and critically reliant on the indulgence of state governments. Over time, as the progressive administrative state grew, particularly under the Wilson and FDR administrations, Washington incrementally devoured state sovereignty. With this dramatic shift in the balance of power, a governing elite emerged—a permanent Beltway ruling class of career politicians whose main interest was in increasing federal power. They now inhabit Congress as if they were life peers or revolve between the bureaucracy and its back-scratching cottage industry of lobbyists, consultants, and celebrity media commentators.

I've concluded that there are two major political parties in this country.

There are the Beltway Elites, Democrats and Republicans, who are committed only to bigger government even as the country commits fiscal suicide.

And there are the rest of us.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Hillary Clinton Edition

Mr. Peabody, please set The Wayback Machine to December 2007:

...Mr. Obama has begun to challenge Mrs. Clinton on her central claim that her candidacy represents a return to the Age of Pericles, a k a the 1990s. The Clinton candidacy -- everyone knows it is a her-and-his affair -- is at its core an appeal to selective nostalgia. We are supposed to remember the lack of a hot war, not the "holiday from history" as al Qaeda gained strength. We are supposed to recall the late-1990s boom, not that it began only after the GOP took Congress and repudiated many Clinton policies.

And we are supposed to forget entirely about Travelgate, Whitewater, lost billing records, the Rose law firm, the Lippo Group, Johnny Chung, Harold Ickes, miraculous cattle-future winnings and lying under oath. So selective is our memory supposed to be that we are asked to credit Mrs. Clinton as a kind of co-President during her husband's eight years, while her husband blocks public access to his Presidential records that might let us examine her actual contribution...

We can now add Benghazi and the entire, catastrophic "Arab Spring" to her impressive C.V. Not to mention the growing Clinton Foundation scandal.

If the field of politics didn't exist, precisely what would a woman like Hillary Clinton be qualified to do?

Bill Clinton: Barack Obama's Best Frenemy

James Taranto, writing at Best of the Web, refers us back to a New York Post article by Edward Klein. It's adapted from the newly released paperback edition of The Amateur, Klein's behind-the-scenes look at the SCOAMF administration.

In 2011 this column put forward the hypothesis that Bill Clinton was Barack Obama's "frenemy"--a slang term for somebody who actively undermines another while feigning friendship. We figured Clinton didn't really want Obama to eclipse him by becoming the second Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to win two full terms.

Over the ensuing months Clinton seemed to confirm the theory by making plenty of backhanded remarks about Obama, but when it really mattered--at last year's Democratic National Convention--he delivered what author Edward Klein accurately describes as "a full-throated endorsement."

But in a the new paperback edition of "The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House," excerpted in yesterday's New York Post, Klein revives the frenemy theory. "A deal was struck," Klein claims, the quo for the Clinton's speech quid was an Obama endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president in 2016:

But after his re-election, Obama began to have second thoughts. He would prefer to stay neutral in the next election, as is traditional of outgoing presidents.

Bill Clinton went ballistic and threatened retaliation. Obama backed down. He called his favorite journalist, Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes," and offered an unprecedented "farewell interview" with departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The result was a slobbering televised love-in--and an embarrassment to all concerned.

Assuming Klein is right, recent events in Washington make for an interesting twist on the frenemy theory. With the current scandals and the impending implementation of ObamaCare, it's quite possible an Obama endorsement will be poisonous come 2016. Imagine if Richard Nixon had endorsed and campaigned for Gerald Ford in 1976. Mrs. Clinton may find that the man she seeks to replace is her worst frenemy.

Here are a couple of pages from the introduction to The Amateur.


It's kinda like a horror novel, only real.

Click here if you want to order the new paperback edition from Amazon.

NBER: Yep, Bill Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, and Janet Reno Were Directly Responsible for the 2008 Mortgage Meltdown

Any careful and honest analysis puts the blame for the 2008 financial crisis on Bill Clinton and his sycophants who implemented the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) just put the final nail in the coffin.

Democrats and the media insist the Community Reinvestment Act, the anti-redlining law beefed up by President Clinton, had nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis and recession... But a new study by the respected National Bureau of Economic Research finds, "Yes, it did. We find that adherence to that act led to riskier lending by banks."

Added NBER: "There is a clear pattern of increased defaults for loans made by these banks in quarters around the (CRA) exam. Moreover, the effects are larger for loans made within CRA tracts," or predominantly low-income and minority areas.

To satisfy CRA examiners, "flexible" lending by large banks rose an average 5% and those loans defaulted about 15% more often... The strongest link between CRA lending and defaults took place in the runup to the crisis — 2004 to 2006 — when banks rapidly sold CRA mortgages for securitization by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Wall Street.

CRA regulations are at the core of Fannie's and Freddie's so-called affordable housing mission. In the early 1990s, a Democrat Congress gave HUD the authority to set and enforce (through fines) CRA-grade loan quotas at Fannie and Freddie... It passed a law requiring the government-backed agencies to "assist insured depository institutions to meet their obligations under the (CRA)." The goal was to help banks meet lending quotas by buying their CRA loans.
But they had to loosen underwriting standards to do it. And that's what they did.

"We want your CRA loans because they help us meet our housing goals," Fannie Vice Chair Jamie Gorelick beseeched lenders gathered at a banking conference in 2000, just after HUD hiked the mortgage giant's affordable housing quotas to 50% and pressed it to buy more CRA-eligible loans to help meet those new targets. "We will buy them from your portfolios or package them into securities."

She described "CRA-friendly products" as mortgages with less than "3% down" and "flexible underwriting." ... From 2001-2007, Fannie and Freddie bought roughly half of all CRA home loans, most carrying subprime features.

...Obama officials, who are cracking the CRA whip anew against banks, insist the law played no role in the mortgage meltdown... While the 1977 law was passed 30 years before the crisis, it underwent a major overhaul just 10 years earlier. Starting in 1995, banks were measured on their use of innovative and flexible" lending standards, which included reduced down payments and credit requirements.

Banks that didn't meet Clinton's tough new numerical lending targets were denied merger plans, among other penalties. CRA shakedown groups like Acorn held hostage the merger plans of banks like Citibank and Washington Mutual until they pledged more loans to credit-poor minorities... WaMu CEO Kerry Killinger has blamed the CRA for his bank's overexposure to risky loans. He said he wanted to tighten lending requirements, but "such measures would have presented other issues such as the company's CRA rating and its commitment to serving its (low-income and minority) customers and communities."

President Obama, in his younger days, was an attorney for Acorn and party to a lawsuit against Citibank. He, too, had a direct hand in triggering the mortgage meltdown.

NOW THEY TELL US: U.S. Faces "a Growing Jihadist Threat"--Hillary

The indefatigable Robert Spencer highlights a key snippet of Hillary Clinton's Benghazi rope-a-dope testimony.

After four years of pretending there is no jihad against the free world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blurted out the truth during her testimony on the Benghazi jihad massacre Wednesday: “We now face a spreading jihadist threat,” she said, adding: “We have to recognize this is a global movement.”

We do? Yet the Obama administration has for years steadfastly and repeatedly denied both that there was a jihadist threat at all and that it was a global movement. So far has the Obama administration been from acknowledging that there was a jihad threat that less than two months into Obama’s first term, on March 16, 2009, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted proudly that in her first testimony to Congress, “I did not use the word ‘terrorism,’ I referred to ‘man-caused’ disasters...

...On May 13, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee, where he was questioned repeatedly by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) about whether the Fort Hood jihad mass murders, the attempted jihad car bombing in Times Square, and the Christmas underwear jihad bomber over Detroit could be attributed to “radical Islam.” Holder repeatedly refused to agree to this, going only so far as to say: “There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious.”

...Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, who is the current Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, echoed Holder’s reluctance to say that Islam had anything to do with jihad terrorism on May 26, 2010, during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He declared: “Nor do we describe our enemies as jihadists or Islamists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.”

Now that Hillary has revealed the true threat of Jihadists, I eagerly await the follow-up corrections and apologies from Messrs. Brennan, Obama, and Napolitano. With all due respect.


Hat tip: Winterspirit.

ON A ROLL: Bill Clinton's Sticky Situation

The geniuses at Hope n' Change Cartoons have been on a roll of late. If you haven't visited over the last few days, you've missed out on gems like these.

I'd recommend making H&C one of your regular bookmarks.

SHANNON WATTS, FOUNDER OF "MOMS FOR GUN CONTROL", SLAMS BILL CLINTON: Sent Armed Guards into Schools in 2000

The hypocrisy of the would-be tyrants on the Left never fails to amaze. Case in point: one Shannon Watts, founder of "One Million Moms for Gun Control".

Gun-control advocates reacted with incredulity at the statements by Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, at his Friday press conference. LaPierre called for armed guards in every school in the nation and blamed violent media, video games, films and music videos, not guns, for violence in society.

"It was absolutely outrageous,' said Shannon Watts, who founded One Million Moms for Gun Control just five days ago. "They are about to see a tsunami of 84 million angry moms coming out at them. Angry moms like they have never seen before. We are going to do for gun control what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did for drunk drivers...

...We understand about the Second Amendment, but it was written in 1791, before AK47s." America needs common sense, she said.

In response, George Washington commented from the afterlife:

Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth... from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable... the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.

Shannon Watts is a nincompoop, who must ignore the hundreds of millions of innocent civilians killed by their own governments in the 20th century alone in her inane quest to trade liberty for security, which will secure neither.

Actually, I made that last sentence up. The rest was all George.

Now, among the multitude of reasons that Shannon Watts is a nincompoop, is the fact that Bill Clinton actually implemented armed cops at at schools in 2000.

Only Barack Obama cut the funding for it. Oops.

The NRA came out with a proposal to post armed police officers at schools to prevent or at least minimize the next school shooting. The left promptly called the idea nuts.

Turns out, it wasn’t a new idea. President Bill Clinton proposed the same idea in April 2000. He implemented it, too, only to see Barack Obama cut the funding for it.

So, if you’re keeping score, the NRA agrees with a 12-year old Bill Clinton position on school security. The left just called a former Democrat president “crazy.”

...The NRA today proposed protecting our children to a level similar to the way we protect our banks and many public buildings: With armed security. As we’ve established, this idea has been around for more than 12 years and was once proposed by a Democratic president. Many on the anti-gun left responded to today’s proposal not with a thoughtful rejoinder, but with calls to shoot Wayne LaPierre.

For students of history, I wonder whose counsel is more valuable: Shannon Watts -- or America's founders?


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

ONCE IN A WHILE HE BLURTS OUT THE TRUTH: Bill Clinton admits the economy is broken

Well, this won't help the ever-widening rift between the Clinton clan and Barack Obama.

At a campaign event for Barack Obama's reelection campaign, Bill Clinton said that Mitt Romney's argument "is true, we're not fixed"...

Governor Romney's argument is, we're not fixed, so fire him and put me in. It is true we're not fixed. When President Obama looked into the eyes of that man who said in the debate, I had so much hope four years ago and I don't now, I thought he was going to cry. Because he knows that it's not fixed.

...A Romney spokesman comments: "We agree with former President Bill Clinton. The economy has not been fixed under President Barack Obama. Today, more than 23 million Americans are struggling for work, poverty has increased and food stamps are at record levels. Mitt Romney believes we can do better by creating 12 million new jobs with higher take-home pay, cutting spending to put our nation on course for a balanced budget, and actually fixing our economy."

With a record number of people on food-stamps, a record number of people in poverty, a record number of people who have left the work-force, and a record decline in household income, it's safe to say that Bill Clinton is right.

HEY, EVERYTHING'S JUST SUPER BETWEEN THE CLINTONS AND OBAMA: At least, according to the Administration Press

Some AP propagandist-in-training named "Andrew Miga" (if that is his real name) was apparently instructed to push back against reports of open and escalating warfare between the Clintons and the White House.

Which is how piece of dreck came to be posted about an hour ago on the AP wire.

Bill Clinton's back in the campaign game big time

...The Obama campaign said Saturday it was pairing Clinton with another heavyweight, rocker Bruce Springsteen, at a rally this coming Thursday in Ohio, one of the most pivotal states.

Obama himself has cracked that he should appoint Clinton "secretary of explaining stuff." ... The lighthearted tone and determined cooperation between Obama and Clinton is hard-won and may not end with the 2012 campaign.

...If Obama has Bill Clinton to thank for a second term, one way to pay back the debt could be Obama's support for a Hillary Clinton campaign of the future.

Among voters generally, Bill Clinton is more appealing than Obama. A CBS News/New York Times poll in September found 66 percent of registered voters with a favorable view of Clinton, compared with 45 percent for Obama. ... Clinton rocketed out of the party's convention in Charlotte, N.C., last month energized by the massive crowd's roaring reaction to his partly ad-libbed call to arms. Clinton plunged into a two-day swing in Florida and has since added stops for Obama in a string of political battlegrounds.

During one recent week, Clinton:

• joined Obama at a meeting with about a dozen supporters at a private residence in Los Angeles.
• hosted a fundraiser with about 160 people who bought tickets starting at $1,000.
• spoke at a rally for four northern California Democrats in tight House races.
• was in Nevada for a rally for Obama and Democratic Senate candidate Shelley Berkley.
• was at Arizona State University rally with Democratic Senate candidate Richard Carmona.
• then came stops in Iowa and Indiana for more rallies with Senate and congressional candidates as well as fundraising events.

He's expected to keep up the pace until Election Day, Nov. 6... All told, Clinton has appeared at no fewer than 32 fundraisers and 15 rallies for Obama. One big-ticket reception at a private New York City residence with Clinton last June drew 47 people who paid $40,000 apiece.

...Some Democrats fret Clinton could overshadow Obama. A Pew Research Center poll last month showed 29 percent of those surveyed said Clinton's convention speech was the highlight of the party gathering, while just 16 percent called Obama's speech the highlight.

But there's no hiding the Clinton magic during an election year.

And there's no hiding the spin of an Associated Press "news" article during an election year!

When I think of Bill Clinton, I don't think of magic. I think of a convicted, impeached perjurer who sexually abused a series of women including an intern in the White House, opening himself up for blackmail, thereby putting the entire country at risk.

But this is the AP we're talking about; they'd find themselves quite at home covering Chavez, Castro and North Korea's bloated dictator, whatever the hell his name is.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Instantly Discredited NYT Hit Piece Claims Bush Was Aware of Impending Bin Laden Attacks, Did Nothing

It would appear that the Times has embraced a borderline form of Truther-ism.

In what must be Chapter 48,204 of The New York Times' unceasing war on George W. Bush, a propagandist named "Kurt Eichenwald" -- if that is his real name -- recycles the ludicrous claim that the 43rd President ignored plain warnings about the 9/11 attacks.

...11 years later, new details of the attack on the World Trade Center continue to emerge from the government's vault of classified documents and the journalists who've gained access. This year, the reporter with the jaw-dropping scoop is Kurt Eichenwald, a former Timesman and present contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

After reading more than one tweet with the simple instructions "Read this," we clicked on the link to Eichenwald's powerful op-ed, due to be published in The New York Times on September 11. In it, Eichenwald goes into teeth-grinding detail about how the Bush administration had even more advance notice about Osama Bin Laden's attack than we previously realized. You should read it, too.

With the infamous August 6 White House briefing as a focal point, Eichenwald walks through the months and years [Ed: Remember, Bush has been President for all of half a year when these events occurred] of warnings leading up to the September 11 attacks. Some of these are events and reports that remain classified, but Eichenwald says he's "read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration's reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed."

Eichenturd's source for the article: "An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration."

Which, of course, means a single person who could be an entry-level staffer... or a more senior one holding a grudge. In other words, following the template of prior Times hit pieces, it's one anonymous person. Kind of like the one anonymous person who told me Eichenwald likes to wear women's underwear.

As commenter Hokma reminds us:

Eichenwald was demolished on the Joe Scarborough Show by former New York Governor George Pataki who ripped him to shreds and Eichenwald had no where to go trying to defend his book...

Here are [the] facts. Bin Laden should have been dead or captured before Bush was President.

Indeed. Remember Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger?

Yes, that's the same fun-loving Sandy Berger who stole and destroyed classified documents related to the 9/11 investigation.

While the NYT's Truthers are busy investigating how Halliburton imploded WTC 7, Richard Miniter discloses the real reason Berger risked a prison sentence to steal the 9/11 documents.

My informed sources suggest that what Berger destroyed were copies of the Millennium After-Action Review, a binder-sized report prepared by Richard Clarke in 2000—a year and half before the 9-11 attacks. The review made a series of recommendations for a tougher stance against bin Laden and terrorism. There are 13 or more copies of this report. But only one contains hand-written notes by President Bill Clinton. Apparently, in the margin beside the recommendations, Bill Clinton wrote NO, NO, NO next to many of the tougher policy proposals. You can see why Clinton might be happy to see these records vanish down the memory hole... So Berger was stuffing in pants and socks and later shredding the evidence that President Clinton did not want to take a tougher line on bin Laden, following the 1998 attack on two U.S. embassies that killed 224 people (including 12 American diplomats). [Now Hillary] makes Berger one of her top three foreign policy advisers... and I have a few questions: Did she bring him aboard to reward him for his criminal destruction of classified material? Or did she sign him up because of his stellar record in fighting bin Laden in the late 1990s?

If Miniter's sources are correct -- and, from the looks of things, they are -- it's easy to determine why Berger took the risks he did.

Bill Clinton's legacy and Hillary Clinton's 2008 hopes for the presidency rested on Berger's ability to purge the National Archives of the incriminating material.

And the Times wouldn't lift a finger investigating any of these outrages.

They were too busy inventing extramarital affairs for John McCain and weapons-grade-stupid hit jobs like the "Al Qaqaa" fable.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: MYSTERY SPEAKER AT #DNC2012 REVEALED

Must credit Biff Spackle.

"...and then he told me, "You stay here while I swim and get us some universal health care!'"

Exclusive Transcript of Funniest Joke at Tonight's DNC

Biff Spackle intercepted the complete transcript for tonight's DNC speeches using his l337 h4x0r skillz. He says the best joke is the following:

A man takes the day off work and decides to go out golfing.
He is on the second hole when he notices a frog sitting next to the green.
He thinks nothing of it and is about to shoot when he hears,
Ribbit 9 Iron.'

The man looks around and doesn't see anyone.
Again, he hears, 'Ribbit 9 Iron.'
He looks at the frog and decides to prove the frog wrong.
He puts the club away, and grabs a 9 iron.

Boom! He hits it 10 inches from the cup. He is shocked.

He says to the frog, 'Wow that's amazing..
You must be a lucky frog, eh?
The frog replies, 'Ribbit Lucky frog.'
The man decides to take the frog with him to the next hole.

'What do you think frog?' The man asks.
'Ribbit 3 wood.'
The guy takes out a 3 wood and, Boom! Hole in one...
The man is befuddled and doesn't know what to say.

By the end of the day,
the man's golfed the best game of golf in his life.
He asks the frog, 'OK where to next?'
The frog replies, 'Ribbit Las Vegas ...'

They go to Las Vegas and the guy says, 'OK frog, now What?'
The frog says, 'Ribbit Roulette.'

Upon approaching the roulette table, the man asks,
'What do you think I should Bet?'
The frog replies, 'Ribbit $3000, black 6.'

Now, this is a million-to-one shot to win, but
after the golf game the man figures what the heck.

Boom!

Tons of cash comes sliding back across the table.
The man takes his winnings and buys the best room in the Hotel.
He sits the frog down and Says,

'Frog, I don't know how to repay you. You've won me all this money and I am forever grateful.'

The frog replies, 'Ribbit Kiss Me.'
He figures why not, since after all the frog did for Him,
He deserves it...

With a kiss, the frog turns into a gorgeous 15-year-old girl.

"And that, your honor, is how the girl ended up in my room.
So help me God.
Or my name is not William Jefferson Clinton."

Exclusive, must credit Biff Spackle: Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Brodderick to hold RNC panel discussion on protecting women from predators

Just kidding. But wouldn't it be appropriate?

Not to get too hung up on The Senate Candidate Who Shall Not Be Named™, but the fact that a disbarred, impeached, admitted pervert -- who was accused of rape by one woman, sued for molestation by another, publicly accused of fondling another, and who, eh, gave a cigar to an intern in the Oval Office -- is the keynote speaker at the Democrat National Convention is highly relevant to this discussion?

I join Mark Levin in calling for President Obama, Claire McCaskill, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer and Dee Wasserman Snider to demand that Clinton withdraw from his speaking engagement.

Otherwise, it's apparent Democrats are waging a veritable war on women.

As an aside, does Clinton have to notify his new neighbors each time he moves?

Ponzi Government QOTD: "Transfer one more conspiracy theory into the conspiracy fact bin"

The indefatigable Tyler Durden notes a curious admission that I can guaran-damn-tee you won't be reading about in the weekend funny papers:

While one may wonder about the implications of the just announced "accelerated wind-down" of the GSEs, predicated in no small part by the surge in animosity between Tim Geithner and the FHFA's Ed DeMarco, there is one aspect of the announcement that is completely and utterly unambigious: as part of its justification to demand faster liquidation of Fannie and Freddie's "investment portfolio" Tim Geithner gave the following argument:

This will help achieve several important objectives, including... Ending the circular practice of the Treasury advancing funds to the GSEs simply to pay dividends back to Treasury

In other words not some fringe blog, not some "partisan" media outlet, not some morally conflicted whistleblowing former employee seeking immunity, but the US Trasury itself just admitted it had been engaged in circular check kiting scheme, which essentially has all the components of a Ponzi scheme in it, ever since the nationalization (about which there is no now doubt and which means the GSE's $6 trillion in debt is now fully on the Treasury's balance sheet) of Fannie and Freddie in 2008.

Transfer one more conspiracy theory into the conspiracy fact bin.

The ludicrous hacks Jim Johnson, Jamie Gorelick and Franklin Raines -- all Democrats, all Clinton sycophants, and all of whom raped Fannie Mae like a Doberman let loose in a Toy Poodle pet shop -- should be serving time in federal lockup. Between them and a couple of other execs, they were somehow able to pull $200 million in compensation out of FNM just before the entire system imploded.

The history books, if they are written with a modicum of the truth, will remember these Democrat henchmen as the linchpins of the housing meltdown.

We are now watching the Democrat Party implode, right before our eyes

What would you call a General who abandoned his troops on the battlefield? I would call him "General Obama". The worst president in American history (Jimmy Carter just breathed a sigh of relief) -- who has set the country up for both fiscal and national security disasters -- is literally tearing the Democrat Party apart.

More interested in protecting his own job, he stayed away from Wisconsin during the entire recall fight (which was lost by the Left, badly).

And the Clinton wing of the Democrat Party continues to lob grenades at Obama, undermining his bleak message of scapegoating and diversion with shiny objects ("Look over there -- it's a woman who can't get free contraceptives!"). Consider the following instances of subtle rebellion:

• Former Clinton Adviser Lanny Davis Goes Off On Obama Aides: “You Have Vicious People Who Are Working For The President” - "It may be meltdown unless they come to their senses. Why would they want to create enemies, or depict people as enemies: who are their friends?"

• Clinton's Tax-Cut Position Undercuts Obama Stance - "Former Democratic President Bill Clinton suggested Tuesday that Congress temporarily extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, undercutting President Barack Obama's position that the rates on upper-income Americans should rise at year's end."

• Ed Rendell: Obama ‘hurt by being a legislator only’ before presidency - "Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell... made his latest swipe at the president Thursday morning in an interview on CBS’s “This Morning.” ... Asked by host Charlie Rose whether he thought Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would have handled the presidency differently from Obama, Rendell responded that he thought Clinton “would’ve come in with a lot more executive experience... I think the president was hurt by being a legislator only.” Rendell said."

• Bill Clinton On Romney's Bain Ties: 'This Is Good Work' - "During an appearance on CNN on Thursday night, Bill Clinton weighed in on presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's former private equity firm, Bain Capital, which has come under scrutiny in the campaign... "I don't think we ought to get into a position where we say this is bad work," Clinton said. "This is good work." ... Clinton characterized Romney's career as "sterling.""

• Booker's big mouth ruins relationship with Obama, Cabinet hopes - "Thinking highly of [Newark Mayor Cory] Booker, Obama’s campaign asked him to appear on “Meet the Press” on May 20 to act as a mouthpiece, but he proceeded to eviscerate one of the president’s key campaign themes... Booker told a national TV audience the president’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at private-equity firm Bain Capital were “nauseating” and made him “very uncomfortable.” ... “He’s dead to us,” one ranking administration official said of the prevailing feelings at the White House and Obama headquarters in Chicago."

• Deval Patrick, Democratic Governor, Creates Obama Campaign Headache By Defending Bain - "Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ended up defending Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Thursday during TV appearances in which the Democratic politician was supposed to be serving as a surrogate for President Barack Obama. Patrick... applauded Boston-based Bain Capital, implicitly criticizing the Obama campaign's attacks on Romney's record at the private equity firm."

In short, the Democrat knives are out for Obama. But why is all of this happening now?

Because the Clinton Wing of the Democrat Party is astute enough to know what's coming. I believe we are watching the first signs of a political tsunami. In state after state, Barack Obama has marshaled only 60% of the vote... as an incumbent president in the Democrat freaking primaries.

That's not to say any of this will be easy. It will be a pitched political battle, with every dirty trick, every left-wing media "October Surprise" hit-job, and every illegal voting gambit known to man. It will take all of us, working as hard as we can, to educate our family members, our friends, our neighbors and our colleagues and to ensure that the margin of victory surpasses what I like to call "The Holder Margin".

But I feel, deep in my gut, that a Tsunami is about to wash across the American landscape like nothing any of us have ever seen before.

And after the Marxist Left splinters the Democrat Party into tiny little shards, it will be time for we Constitutional Conservatives to take on our next challenge.

Because our work won't be done.

Our next task will be to replace the cowardly, Rockefeller-style leadership of the Republican Party with patriots who are more interested in saving the country than their own pathetic hides. Our next task is to continue to put the United States back on the road of Constitutionalism, the greatest system of government ever devised by man.

"Profiles in Courage: The Bin Laden Hit", by President Barack Obama

To be fair, this is not my work. And no one on Journolist seems to know who created this brilliant piece, but I've now received it from three different people. If you are the author, please email me for full credit, linkage, and job offers (while the "Junior Cub Reporter IV" position isn't prestigious, it is low-paying).

Stunning: Old Media Silent as 60 Minutes Confirms That Bill Clinton Refused to Kill Bin Laden

Unless you were watching 60 Minutes this Sunday, it's likely you missed its interview confirming that Bill Clinton had Osama Bin Laden in his sights and refused to pull the metaphorical trigger. Ultimately, the 9/11 attacks -- only one of a series of devastating and deadly terror strikes tied to Bin Laden -- became the end-result.

Lara Logan, CBS: That mission actually began five years before 9/11. That's when the CIA set up what became Hank Crumpton's special unit tasked with finding Osama bin Laden.

Hank Crumpton, Former Deputy Director of the CIA'S Counter-Terrorism Center: From '98, '99 all the way up to 2001, the warnings were there ... We had extensive human networks in Afghanistan, Afghan sources that had been reporting on al Qaeda, on the presence of bin Laden.

But Crumpton says the Clinton White House didn't trust the CIA's Afghan sources alone and they wanted U.S. eyes on the target.

Hank Crumpton: So we were driven to look at various technical options. And we looked at a range of things. Long-range optics, they were too heavy, too cumbersome to get over the mountains. We looked at balloons. The prevailing winds would take those balloons to China. That would be a bad thing. We scrapped that. And then we stumbled across the UAVs, particularly the Predator. And sure enough, wasn't long before we had the Predator in theater over Afghanistan, the Predator unarmed at the time. And our human sources took us to a village-- far-- not far from Kandahar.

Lara Logan: And what did you see there?

Hank Crumpton: We saw a security detail, a convoy and we saw bin Laden exit the vehicle.

Lara Logan: Clearly?

Hank Crumpton: Clearly. And we had-- the optics were spot on. It was beaming back to us, CIA headquarters. We immediately alerted the White House. And the Clinton administration's response was, "Well, it will take several hours for the TLAMs, the cruise missiles launched from submarines, to reach that objective. So you need to tell us where bin Laden will be five or six hours from now." The frustration was enormous.

Lara Logan: So at that moment you wanted to kill him?

Hank Crumpton: Yes.

Lara Logan: But you couldn't get permission?

Hank Crumpton: Correct.

He couldn't get permission to do anything, including allowing the CIA's Afghan agents on the ground to attack bin Laden's compound. That missed opportunity in the late summer of 1999, led Crumpton and his CIA team to figure out how to arm the Predator drone with hellfire missiles.

Lara Logan: So the Predator drone strikes that take place in the tribal areas of Pakistan today are a direct result of what happened when you had Osama bin Laden in your sights in Afghanistan and no way to kill him yourselves?

Hank Crumpton: It was a response to the lack of response on the part of the administration or DOD. So the handful of CIA officers that we had, in great frustration, we began the discussion of, "Okay. We find him again we will have to engage ourselves. And we'll have to do it right then, right there."

What a freaking outrage. And equally outrageous? Legacy media's silence.

Remember when Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was caught destroying Top Secret documents related to the Bin Laden debacle? You don't? Maybe that's because legacy media barely reported it.

As Richard Miniter wrote in 2007, Berger's intent was to prevent disclosure of the Clinton cowardice that ultimately led to 9/11.

My informed sources suggest that what Berger destroyed were copies of the Millennium After-Action Review, a binder-sized report prepared by Richard Clarke in 2000—a year and half before the 9-11 attacks. The review made a series of recommendations for a tougher stance against bin Laden and terrorism. There are 13 or more copies of this report. But only one contains hand-written notes by President Bill Clinton. Apparently, in the margin beside the recommendations, Bill Clinton wrote NO, NO, NO next to many of the tougher policy proposals.


You can see why Clinton might be happy to see these records vanish down the memory hole... So Berger was stuffing in pants and socks and later shredding the evidence that President Clinton did not want to take a tougher line on bin Laden, following the 1998 attack on two U.S. embassies that killed 224 people (including 12 American diplomats).

Even now that CBS has confirmed the story, a quick Google News search reveals that no one in old media cares.

3,000 innocent Americans dead. Countless thousands of American warriors fallen and wounded in avenging the terrorist attacks and those who enabled them.

A president who knew Bin Laden was complicit in prior attacks and failed to act.

A cowardly president who was too busy golfing to do his job.

In other words, just another disastrous Democrat president.

Picture Story: Party of Weakness

This is one of Iran's medium-range missiles, which it is placing on Venezuelan soil according to a November 25, 2010 report in Die Welt.

The same report asserts that Venezuela will permit Iran to open a military facility staffed with Iranian missile officers and soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Medium-range missiles launched from this base could reach cities in the United States; a likely first-strike scenario involves the detonation of EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) weapons over the continental U.S.

Where did Iran get such sensitive missile guidance and avionics technologies? Western intelligence services pin the blame on China, which reportedly sold the Mullahs the Nasr-1, -2 and other missile technologies.

These missiles are now mass-produced by Iran, but were "originally developed and built in China, and have been advertised as being in service with the Chinese armed forces."

Missile technologies are only part of the problem. This is an Iranian defector, the former diplomat Mohammad Reza Heydari. He and others report that North Korea has collaborated with Iran on the design of nuclear weapons, including warhead design techniques.

This is a Pyongyang military parade that took place in October. The military dictatorship has become increasingly belligerent since it detonated a small fission weapon and demonstrated increasing expertise with missile guidance systems.

And where did North Korea get its nuclear- and missile-guidance technologies? Experts point to China, with scientists stating that, "[t]here is no possibility of North Korea achieving what nuclear capability it has without Chinese help."

It is worth asking: how did Red China move so quickly to acquire sophisticated missile guidance and other avionic technologies?

In 1998, in an unprecedented repudiation of the wishes of numerous defense and intelligence officials, President William J. Clinton signed a waiver allowing a sophisticated Loral satellite to be launched into orbit by a Chinese rocket.

Why would Clinton sign such a waiver when it risked allowing sophisticated weapons guidance technology to fall into Chinese hands? In fact, Loral would later plead "no contest to a long list of U.S. national security violations, including the unauthorized transfer of missile guidance technology to the Chinese army."

This is Clinton with the chairman of Loral, Bernard L. Schwartz, who coincidentally was the largest single donor to the entire Democrat Party in 1997.

Clinton repeatedly met with and entertained other Democrat contributors -- several of whom turned out to be operatives of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Exactly what they got for their money remains unknown to the general public.

That is because full investigative report of the Clinton administration's actions is embodied in The Cox Report, the complete version of which is still classified "Top Secret". Its summary, however, is enough to send chills down the reader's spine: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has stolen design information on the United States’ most advanced thermonuclear weapons.

In short, Clinton and the Democrats allowed sensitive technologies to escape to China. Later they rippled from China to rogue terror states like Iran and North Korea.

Thus, thanks in large part to the wanton greed and criminality of the Democrat National Committee and Bill Clinton, subsequent generations of Americans will be needlessly exposed to the risk of rogue regimes gaining access to America's most sensitive nuclear and missile guidance secrets.

"The missile technology passed by Loral and Hughes to the Chinese army has matured into a nuclear-tipped monster called the DF-31, which can waste whole American cities in a blinding flash of nuclear hell... ...the results of years of abuse during the 1990s remain with us well into the 21st century." -- (source)

Evil is on the march--evil aided and abetted by the Clinton administration, just one in a series of disastrous Democrat presidencies.


Related: Operation Starfish.

Photo o' the day (and maybe the week)

Uncle Ben:

Hilarious Jamie Gorelick Quote o' the Day

What's funnier than Bill Clinton talking about the virtues of chastity? That would be Jamie Gorelick extolling the high ethical standards required by members of the bar.

An American Bar Association group plans to meet this week to mull a question stirring up debate around the legal community: can someone who is not a lawyer own part of a law firm?

For 21 years, the answer has been no — except in the District of Columbia, the only jurisdiction in the United States that allows law firms to share fees and profits with non-lawyers...

...“Traditionally, law firms have been owned and controlled solely by lawyers, and they’re bound by a certain regulatory structure,” said Jamie Gorelick, a partner at WilmerHale who co-chairs the Commission on Ethics 20/20. “The concern is that a non-lawyer would not be similarly bound and doesn’t have the same ethical rules as lawyers.”

The same ethical rules as lawyers?

The... same... ethic --- HAHAHHAHAH AH AH AHA HAH AHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA HA HA HAHAHAHAHHA AHHWHWAHAHHA AHWH AHW AHW HA HAHA HA HA HA AH AH AHHAHAW HA H HA AHHA (*choke*) AHHAWHAHA (*gurgle*) AHWHAHA (*wheeze*) ---

Must. Catch. Breath.

In 2004, observers were "astonished" to discover that a key member of the 9/11 Commission had a fatal conflict-of-interest. Jamie Gorelick had served as a Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997.

It was later revealed that Gorelick had established a pre-Patriot Act "wall" that prevented the foreign intelligence and criminal investigative communities from collaborating.

Her 1995 memo, entitled "Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations", stated explicitly that they would "go beyond what is legally required, [to] prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."

The result: shortly before 9/11, Gorelick's wall "specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui", the so-called "20th hijacker."

At the time, an enraged FBI investigator wrote a memo to headquarters which included the sentence, 'Whatever has happened to this -- someday someone will die -- and wall or not -- the public will not understand why we were not more effective..."

The 2004 disclosure that Gorelick's service as a 9/11 Commissioner was the archetypical conflict-of-interest should have triggered a cacophony of complaints and demands for a new investigation. Instead, the mainstream media turned deaf and dumb and the controversy faded into the background.

Gorelick's "wall" wrapped a blindfold around America just when it needed its vision to stop the attacks that killed thousands and which sucked a half a trillion dollars out of the economy.

Where did Gorelick turn up next?

Though she had no training or experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae and served in the role from 1997 to 2003. During that six-year period, she earned over $26 million.

During Gorelick's tenure, FNMA suffered a $10 billion accounting scandal, an ominous harbinger of the firm's looming troubles. One of the falsified transactions helped FNMA hit earnings targets for 1998, which triggered bonuses for top executives including nearly $800,000 to Gorelick.

Put simply "Jamie Gorelick was one of the Fannie executives who benefited from inflated bonuses based on Enron-style accounting."

In 2002 Business Week interviewed Gorelick concerning the health of FNMA. She responded, "We believe we are managed safely. We are very pleased that Moody's gave us an A-minus in the area of bank financial strength -- without a reference to the government in any way. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions."

Less than a year later regulators "accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses."

Gorelick's highly unethical involvement with the 9/11 Commission, her malevolent entanglement with Fannie Mae, her ill-fated defense of Duke College [Ed: intentional Dukie antagonism] against its Lacrosse Team, etc. etc. long ago earned her the nickname "The Mistress of Disaster."

Anyone quoting Gorelick in an article about "ethics" deserves a heaping helping of ridicule. But this is The Washington Post we're talking about, after all.

And, if there were any justice to be found in the District whatsoever, Jamie Gorelick would be serving a 25-to-Life with a 5'9", 350 lb. cellmate -- and soon to be soulmate -- named Tina.