The story:

… in his brief appearances in the 336-page report, Geithner’s main concern seems to be with preventing a panic over the diseased state of Lehman. Geithner not only acknowledges his efforts at concealment, but seems to believe they were the right thing to do:

In addition to the losses Lehman would incur by selling “sticky” assets at firesale prices, deleveraging also raised the additional problems of market perception and valuation.3187 As Secretary Timothy Geithner explained to the Examiner, selling “sticky” assets at discounts could hurt Lehman by revealing to the market that Lehman “had a lot of air in [its] marks” and thereby further draining confidence in the valuation of the assets that remained on Lehman’s balance sheet.3188

The first sentence is drawn from a November interview between Geithner and Valukas, the second from “Reducing Systemic Risk In A Dynamic Financial System,” a speech Geithner delivered in June 2008. To say dressing up Lehman’s bleeding sores was wrong, you need to acknowledge that a central bank should not engage in the suppression of information, and I’m pretty sure we lost that argument a long time ago.

Smith suspects (not without reason) that this mission to regulate the market’s feelings toward Lehman led Geithner to connive at what certainly looks to have been a fraud: the erroneous counting of “501 Repos” — assets Lehman sold with an agreement to repurchase — as straightforward sales. That is, the outside world thought these toxic assets were gone from Lehman’s books, when in fact they were merely festering. Smith has some interesting words about whether, and why, Lehman counterparties went along with this charade. (Likeliest answer: They were all betting on the come like the rest of America.) Geithner, typically, says he would have caught the problem if only we’d given him more power…

Enough to send Geithner to jail? No. Enough to warrant intense further investigation? Yes. Sufficient cause for Obama to fire him. Certainly. Will Geithner get fired?

Are you kidding? He was appointed after it was known he was a tax cheat. In a Chicago Administration, what Geithner did is just par for the course – he was protecting the big money men from their own, stupid mistakes. If he hadn’t protected them, they wouldn’t have any money, you see? If these banksters were now poor, they couldn’t donate to the Democrat party, fund various leftist causes and, of course, provide sinecures for retired Treasury Secretaries in the by and by. Asking Obama to get rid of Geithner is to ask him to go against business as usual…it’d be to ask him to be an agent of real change we could really believe in.

Ain’t gonna happen – unless Geithner becomes a direct, political liability for the mid-terms. Absent a risk to Democrat political power, there’s no chance he’ll be fired.

UNLV loses, but still looks to have a spot in March Madness.

The government monster just grows and grows – thanks to unionized government employees and politicians who can’t think of anything but spending.

In West Hollywood, only leftist women matter.

Texas schools, in a radical departure from accepted practice, might try to teach a bit of truth about American history. Liberals are furious. (H/T: Black and Right).

Michael Yon talks about the sheer difficulty in getting supplies to our forces in Afghanistan. Don’t forget to hit Yon’s tip jar – he’s entirely reader supported and one of the few we can rely upon for honest reporting about the war.

Anti-Defamation League is “shocked and stunned” at Obama’s actions against Israel. I’m “shocked and stunned” that the ADL is “shocked and stunned”. The guy attended a pro-PLO church for 20 years – you expected something different? That Emanuel, all by himself, would keep Obama’s Administration on an even keel?

The other day when I had that flat tire and all those people kindly offered to help me out? It was great and I’m touched by it, still…but, ya know, it could have been that my hair is nearly all white and I have veteran plates on my car…which means that I’m now the old guy that young guys offer to help…which is sort of a bummer, ya know?

If you live within a three hour’s drive of Washington, it is your duty – as a patriot – to get there on March 16th. If you’re one of our rich, capitalist exploiters of the masses/rapists of the environment, then you haven no excuse no matter where you are – fire up the private jet and get in there…and take a selection of bitter gun and Bible-clingers with you.

Take the day off from work, if you have to. The more people there, the better. As Dan Riehl puts it, “be heard or be herded”.

This is the People’s Surge against ObamaCare – and against the attempted leftist take over of America. Here is where we stop them cold – November is when we start to roll them back.

The news:

…Revised data from the Texas Workforce Commission now show that the Austin metro area was losing jobs from the very beginning of 2009, and that the job losses were deeper than experts thought.

The revised data also show that Texas as a whole had a tougher job market last year than thought. The state lost 354,000 jobs in 2009, which is 78,000 more than the 276,000 previously estimated, according to the updated data…

…The California Employment Development Department on March 1 reported the state had lost 292,000 more jobs in 2009 than officials had thought; the new estimate is 871,000 jobs cut, compared with the earlier estimate of 579,000. Oregon reported losing 28,000 more jobs in 2009 than previously estimated.

Why the difference? Because when you get a number in, say, March of 2010 for February, its an estimate. A bunch of data is collected but its not really hard data – the hard data is the actual tax rolls. If a business had to send tax money in to the government for an employee, then we know there was certainly an employee working. The new numbers are based upon comparing those tax-roll numbers with previous tax-roll numbers.

The happy-talk numbers we’re getting now on employment and retail sales are, just like the initial employment numbers of 2009, a guess. A guess with some validity to it, but still just a guess. It’ll be months before we know the full story. But we can assume that whatever numbers are being given to us now will be revised downwards as time goes on – so the supposedly rosy picture of March, 2010 will become a much cloudier figure in, say, June. Keep that in mind as you hear economics stories.

My contention is that the private, productive economy continues to shrink. I base this upon the fact that employment in things like construction continues to decline while sale tax revenues are still going down rapidly. If we were on the verge of a recovery, we’d see at least stability or only minor drops in those two things. We’re not – not yet, and thus my assertion of a contracting economy.

Its not a matter of if we’ll have a double-dip recession, but how long the government and the bankers can mask its existence. The banks, their books still filled with worthless assets, simply cannot afford another down turn – many of them would simply go out of business. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury, naturally, don’t want another crash – especially at Treasury where the primary goal is to get some sort of good economy in the public mind by 2012.

The entities which pull the financial strings will do everything they can to keep the fiscal ball in the air. They’ll print, they’ll borrow, they’ll use financial hocus-pocus. Their hope is that some how, some way the economy will genuinely recover, thus allowing them to cover the bad assets on the books. How long will they be able to keep it up? Beats all heck out of me – but the longer they hold it off, the worse it will be.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Seems they won’t really have that new ObamaCare bill up for 72 hours before a vote:

House Democrats appear to be softening their pledge to allow the public 72 hours to review the health care reform package online before a House vote. “We will certainly give as much notice as possible, but I’m not going to say that 72 hours is going to be the litmus test,” said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Friday.

“The House bill or Senate bill, as proposed, has been online for some two-and-a-half months, otherwise known about 75 days,” Hoyer added, referring to the November and December dates each chamber passed its version of health care legislation.

But Democrats could vote as soon as next week on a series of changes to the health care package – called a reconciliation bill – and the number two House Republican criticized Hoyer directly on House floor.

“I’m a little bit taken aback that now that 72-hour rule has been completely cast aside, since nobody in the House has seen what’s in the reconciliation bill,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia.

Its because they don’t know what legislative bribes they’ll need to get it passed and it might end up being that the last bribe or two comes in less than 72 hours before a vote. Plus, if you really had it up there for three days people would have a chance to read it and react to its provisions – and Democrats are not about to let public concerns get in the way of passing a bill.

But it is also just one more lie – one more broken promise. One more clear indicator that they don’t care about the people of the United States.

Interesting and must-read article about the clash between Islam and Christianity – in Africa, where Christianity surges towards a majority of the population:

Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University says the remarkable thing about the recent clashes between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is that they are not remarkable. In a process largely unnoticed in the West, billions of people in Asia and Africa have swapped out their indigenous faiths for either Christianity or Islam. And to an even greater astonishment of Western intellectuals most have chosen Christianity. Now the equalization of numbers has caused a fault line to appear through the Third World at about the tenth degree of latitude where the two aggregations face each other “at daggers drawn”…

…With the numbers between Christians and Muslims equalizing in the region of the 10th degree of latitude, many places formerly dominated by Islam are now doubtful ground. It’s upsetting the equilibrium…

This being something I’ve been aware of for something like a decade now – perhaps longer. Probably because I don’t have a bias against Christianity, I was able notice that while Christianity has largely died out in Europe, it is surging in Africa and Asia – and undergoing a remarkable revival in South and central America (the United States, itself, is a bit of a special case – Christianity has largely died out among the elite, but not among the majority). Of course, as the linked article notes, Islam has grown as well. But not nearly as much as Christianity. Thus in places where there has never really been sectarian violence, we’re seeing it more and more often (and in spite of what might be said, it all stems from Islamist militancy).

The battles of life – the real ones, which people will actually sacrifice for – are all moral battles. Fights between right and wrong. The world is choosing up sides and Islam, losing the battle, is lashing out. Lashing out at us, of course – but also lashing out at Third World Christians. Not for anything the inoffensive Christians of Nigeria and elsewhere have done, but for what they are. Do you understand that, liberals?

There is intense hatred and fear in Islam – needless to say, its among the ruling elite and those who aspire to become the rulers, but the hatred and fear is there and it is the main motivator. They hate the west for its immorality and decadence – for its cowardice and sloth. They hate the United States for those reasons, but also for our Believers who will not back down. They hate Third World Christianity because it beckons their own people – it threatens to turn the hearts and minds of the “hewers of wood and drawers of water” of Islam…freed from Islam’s stagnation, such people would no longer tolerate their subordinate position.

It’ll be interesting to see how it all comes out. Right now, we have a parish priest here in Las Vegas who is from West Africa – hearing him recite the Stations of the Cross is wonderful, given his accent. Yes, we refer to him as “Father”, and the very whitest of American Christians meekly accept instruction from him. He is one of many such in America – Christians from the Third World come to restore Christian faith in the West; and expand Christian faith in the Third World.

The only thing certain is that the week kneed who refuse to believe in any religion will have just about nothing to say in what happens.

Profiled in the MSM as just a bunch of really sweet guys and gals with no particular axe to grind – they just want government to work. Well, not quite:

CNN put more focus on Stacey Hopkins…, so I will start out by dissecting her information trail on the net. CNN paints a very nice picture of her as essentially someone that thinks the nation’s ‘work is not being done’ because of a ‘stifling’ Congress (whatever that means) among other things. She doesn’t even sound overtly political – pleasant, nice, unassuming. Perhaps like a neighbor that you may have.

C-Gen and I did some digging however and you might be surprised with what we found (actually, if you read this blog regularly, you will not be surprised). As was the case with Annabel Park, a few simple google queries (that CNN didn’t seem able to do) provided some amazing information. I hit the treasure-trove of Obama Astroturfing from her blog…

If you click the link, you’ll see all the wonderful Obama stuff. So, we’ve got an Obama activist setting up a Coffee Party to just get things moving? No, we’ve got an astro-turf movement designed to confuse the issues and take a bit of sting out of the TEA Party. It won’t work – they would have gotten away with it ten years ago, but the New Media has exposed it right out the gate.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the left never has a ground-up movement. They are incapable of doing other than following orders on the left…someone has to tell them to get together and then tell them what to talk about and what actions to take.

The phrase “community organizer” nutshells the entire leftist mindset – Obama had to go in and get the community organized because the people who would follow Obama’s ideology simply will not do it on their own. This sort of thing can be done hard or soft – hard in leftist dictatorships like Cuba, soft in the United States states and other free nations – but the fundamental thing is an unwillingness to think and act independently on the part of rank-and-file leftwingers.

Keep this in mind – any group claiming to be grass roots which is not of the right simply will be astro-turf. It can’t be anything but – if it really comes from the people, it will be libertarian or conservative.

A friend sent me this and though the friend is reliable, I figured that I had to check it out – and it is true:

There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto … Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids..) She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

The year Irene was up for the Nobel Peace Prize … She was not selected.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

It appears this woman also saved about 500 adults, including the man she eventually married.

This is the sort of person to honor – this is what it means to show rare courage in a time of crisis and do what you can to bring light in to a dark world.

And the Nobel Committee gave the prize to a man who spoke in front of a camera for a while. Why did they do that? Because for our global leftists, making a political point is more important than doing the right thing.

I can’t help being totally amused by the Democrats whining about alleged abuses of the filibuster by Republicans which has Harry Reid promising filibuster reform next year.

Leaders in the Senate indicated yesterday they will begin discussions within weeks about how to change filibuster rules — which have allowed Republicans in the Senate to block legislation that does not receive 60 votes.

Liberal activists and bloggers hailed the news, after clamoring for Democrats to take action against GOP tactics, which has kept Democrats from advancing key items on their agenda like health care reform.

In a discussion with liberal media outlets Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that the Senate would look at new filibuster rules at the start of the next Congress, the Huffington Post reports.

What’s truly ironic is that the filibuster, a delay tactic for legislation, was abused by Democrats in the Bush years to block qualified nominees from the courts and other appointed positions.  The same liberal activists and bloggers who are drooling at the idea of killing the filibuster now were hailing the Democrats filibusters under Bush.

This just goes to show you that Democrats only believe in rules when those rules work for them. After the 2000 election they wanted to kill the Electoral College. In 2004, they wanted to challenge the results of Ohio, even though no finagling of the results would have created a national popular vote win for Kerry.  In Massachusetts, the Democrat controlled legislature changed the law on vacancies to prevent Republican governor Mitt Romney from having the power to appoint  a replacement for John Kerry had he won the presidential election, and Massachusetts Democrats changed the rule back so Democrat governor Deval Patrick could immediately appoint Paul Kirk, rather than hold a special election when Democrats hoped to ram through health care.

Back to this filibuster nonsense… Let’s consider what it actually happening… Republicans today are trying to prevent Democrats from ramming through unpopular legislation, Democrats prevented a sitting president from fufilling his constitutional obligation to fill vacancies on the courts… yet Republicans are the ones accused of abusing the filibuster? Is Harry Reid joking?

When a majority of the people oppose legislation, one would think that members of Congress would listen to the people. Well, Democrats are turning a blind eye to the will of the people and have been trying to shove there health care takeover through Congress with little debate. Their actions essential prove why the filibuster is an important part of the Senate’s rules.

Granted, I agree that in recent years that the filibuster has been abused, but that’s a result of the growing partisan divide in government, and a failure of the Senate to police itself with regards to its rules. Republicans let Democrats abuse the filibuster when they blocked George W. Bush’s nominees, and their lack of action to stop that abuse has paved the way for a “standard” 60 vote threshold on legislation. Something must be done about that, for sure. But, if Democrats think Republicans are abusing the filibuster, then clearly they do not understand what its purpose is, because they pioneered modern day abuse of the filibuster.

From NRO’s The Corner:

Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online. “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”…

…Stupak notes that his negotiations with House Democratic leaders in recent days have been revealing. “I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance,” he says. “Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered.” The arguments they have made to him in recent deliberations, he adds, “are a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party.”

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party.(emphasis added)

Which is about how I view it – and, as an aside, so much for DNC spin that the bill doesn’t include abortion coverage. If it didn’t, then attaching Stupak’s amendment would be no problem.

They’re going to ram this through, abortion, kickbacks and all, regardless of what we, the people of the United States think. They’ll do it because its the leftist dream – the mechanism, in their view, for gaining operational control of the American people. The leverage to make us a social democracy – the end of the Great Republic.

I don’t think it will work out that way – but that does seem to be the way Democrat leaders, and their yapping chorus in the leftist netroots, views the matter. But that still begs the question – why, then, be insistent upon abortion funding? The left is willing to take this half a loaf ObamaCare bill knowing that if they get it in, they can always expand it, later. So why the big abortion push? I can only guess that the Culture of Death has become so entrenched – abortion has become such a leftist sacrament – that they just can’t part with it.

At any rate, any sort of abortion funding in the bill will just make it that much more unpopular – the American people do not want their tax dollars going to fund abortion. That has been clear in vote after vote and poll after poll for decades. It will be a useful tool for us to attack Democrats with in the fall – and should we win, it will be a strong means of getting the whole mess repealed.

But is Stupak right? Is this the end of pro-life opinion in the Democrat party? I think so. Stupak says he’ll stick around as a Democrat, but it might become impossible for him – the left is already going after him with a campaign of hate and slander, just as they did against Lieberman. Stupak might be essentially forced out – perhaps to become the founder of a Christian-Democrat Party?

Who knows – but anyone who is actually pro-life can have nothing to do with the Democrat party, if they do pass through ObamaCare with abortion funding of any sort.