Uncategorized

Obama Administration Abandons American Dream

Mark Noonan

He wants us to help people rent, rather than own, their homes:

The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an “ownership society’’ and instead plans to pump $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money into creating tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities.

The idea is to pay for the construction of low-rise rental apartment buildings and town houses, as well as the purchase of foreclosed homes that can be refurbished and rented to low- and moderate-income families at affordable rates.

Analysts say the approach takes a wrecking ball to Bush’s heavy emphasis on encouraging homeownership as a way to create national wealth and provide upward mobility for low- and working-class families, especially minorities. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan’s recalibration of federal housing policy, they said, shows that the Obama White House has acknowledged that not everyone can or should own a home.

Which is just typical liberal, elitist hogwash – they don’t want people to own their homes because home ownership means independence. Obama and Co would rather have people stuck in a modern version of the old, hateful “housing projects” of the past…there to remain mired in poverty and government dependency.

Of all the things Obama has done, this tops then all in cynicism – to use the liberal-created financial crisis as a means of taking over the stock of American housing to rent it out to be people financially wiped out by the very same financial crisis which allows Obama’s Administration to buy the property. And how much would any like to bet that the groups set to manage these properties will be (b) in Obama’s hip pocket and (b) given plush contracts for doing it? This will be a windfall for ACORN and other such corrupt, leftist groups.

This is a program we have to stop – the goal of US policy should be to get us as far as possible towards 100% home ownership for the American people. If we wish to remain free people, then we must have property the government doesn’t control – its be owners, or be owned.

Dear Mr. Obama

Mark Noonan

Powerful stuff:

I have in front of me a letter I received from you in response to a letter I wrote to you regarding abortion in the U.S. You thanked me politely for taking the time to share my views on abortion and said, “This is a heart-wrenching issue.”

I just haven’t been able to get one little question out of my mind since reading your letter. Why?

Why is it heart-wrenching? Why would my heart be rent by making a perfectly legal and morally acceptable choice to have an abortion? Why should anyone’s heart be torn by this choice? The highest law of our land says that there is nothing wrong with choosing abortion. If no law is being broken, why should my heart or anyone’s heart be troubled?

In the short time you’ve been President, you have strategically worked to expand abortion access around the country. In fact, you promised in your campaign that your first task upon taking office would be to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate virtually every existing restriction on abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, and even lift the ban on partial-birth abortion. (You said you considered that one a legitimate medical procedure.)

I’m trying to understand, Mr. Obama, but it just doesn’t make any sense. Why would you work so methodically to increase the occurrence of something so heart-wrenching?

As a woman, I can testify to the fact that when I make decisions to protect my privacy or the autonomy of my body, there’s nothing heart-wrenching about it. I am not the least bit torn or conflicted about defending myself in those ways. Indeed, it is my body – the one God gave me and the one He expects me to care for wisely and honorably. My body – like yours – was made to be holy.

Do read the whole thing – and always understand that there are only two positions: pro-life, or pro-abortion. If you are not pro-life, then you are advancing the cause of abortion, even if you hide behind such phrases as “heart-wrenching” to describe something you’d never in a million years seek to curtail. Just as one cannot be half pregnant, so one cannot be half in favor of the sanctity of human life. Its all or nothing – and Obama is giving us nothing.

Phrase of the Day

Mark Noonan

Indeed:

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between. – Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

If we can hold to a lie – that abortion is ok – then we are capable of all manner of evil. It is as simple as that.

Chicago Goes Bankrupt

Mark Noonan

The end result of liberalism:

If you planned to check out a library book, visit a city clinic or have your garbage picked up on Monday, you’re out of luck.

The City of Chicago will basically be closed for business on Aug. 17, a reduced-service day in which most city employees are off without pay, according to a release from the Office of Budget and Management. City Hall, public libraries, health clinics and most city offices will be closed.

Emergency service providers including police, firefighters and paramedics will be working at full strength, but most services not directly related to public safety, including street sweeping, will not be provided, the release said…

…”Every dollar we save from these measures helps to save jobs, and in the long-term, maintain services for Chicagoans,” Mayor Daley said in the release. “This plan relies on most of our civilian employees to be part of the solution to our very serious budget challenges. I want to thank them again for their sacrifice.”

More of more of this is to come – the economy is far worse than the banks and the federal government is letting on (they are hoping that a course of positive thinking will get things rolling again) and the entire mountain of liberal fiscal mismanagement is crashing down.

Weekly Recap (2009-08-15)

Matt Margolis

54% Say "Do Nothing" Better than Obamacare

Mark Noonan

So much for the oft-repeated talking point that the American people are demanding we do something:

Thirty-five percent (35%) of American voters say passage of the bill currently working its way through Congress would be better than not passing any health care reform legislation this year. However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option.

As Rasmussen goes on to note, this doesn’t mean people don’t want reform, but that they don’t want the reform Obama and his Democrats are currently touting. From what I can gather, the majority seem to want:

1. Some sort of mechanism to provide coverage for the un-insured who are unable to pay for insurance (which is not the same as total number of people uninsured).

2. Better protections for expensive procedures/conditions.

3. More control of health care decisions in the hands of doctors and patients.

The trouble with this is that none of these desired aims requires a massive, government-run reorganization of our entire health care system…and thus such things don’t commend themselves to liberal Statists who understand that if they can get us all on the government health care dime, we’ll never get ourselves off of it, and thus we’ll be ripe for the complete Europeanization of the United States. Remember, for the left its all about control – they are sick and darned tired of our unwillingness to bend and so they want a means where they can apply pressure on us to conform to their ideas of what constitutes a good society.

Instinctively, I think the American people are realizing this – that Obama doesn’t give a hoot about whether or not anyone gets any actual care at all, but is determined to impose controls upon us. And thus the growing popular rebellion.

Extra Astroturfing

Mark Noonan

Hot Air has the scoop on Roxana Mayer, who ID’d herself as a doctor supporting Obamacare at a Sheila Jackson-Lee town hall…

Not only was Mayernot a doctor, Roxana Mayer was an Obama delegate, as Patterico discovered with some digging. What’s more, the Houston Chronicle apparently knew this and failed to include it in its glowing coverage of Mayer’s appearance. The reporter, Cindy Horswell, has admitted that she knew Mayer was an Obama delegate and that Mayer didn’t live in Jackson-Lee’s district when she wrote the Chronicle story…

Hot Air goes on to note that Ms. Mayer was a leader in the Obama group “Organizing for America”. Point blank, she was a plant set in place by Obama operatives who were trying to change the terms of the debate. That they had to put up a fake doctor who is actually an Obama organizer in order to get the sound bite necessary…too bad for them that the truth came out, huh?

The left will stop at nothing to win – lies and all manner of trickery are perfectly ok in the left’s book because, not believing in absolute right and wrong, the only thing which matters is advancing the cause. If it takes dishonesty then its not a matter of them taking a regrettable step – for them, its a good thing to do and, if it works, something to be proud about. These are the sorts of people we’re dealing with – keep that in mind and never for a moment take any pro-Obama action or statement at face value…until its completely investigated, our default position on such things should be “doubt”.

UPDATE: Is Obama betting the farm on health care?

Bank Failures Rise to 77 for 2009

Mark Noonan

The hits just keep coming:

Troubled Colonial BancGroup will be bought by rival BB&T Friday, the government said after state regulators closed the bank whose assets had been frozen by a federal judge.

The Montgomery, Ala., bank, which has 346 branches spread across Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas, is the sixth largest bank failure in U.S. history and by far the largest failure of 2009.

With $25 billion in assets and $20 billion in deposits, Colonial is 100 times larger than the typical bank to have failed this year…

…The failure of Colonial is another blow to the FDIC trust fund, which has had to cover 77 bank failures so far in 2009 — including four more late Friday…

They are failing because people aren’t paying their loans – home mortgages and, increasingly, commercial mortgages. Anyone who thinks we’ve bottomed out is a complete fool – we’ve got stock market bubbles and government spending-forced GDP “gains”, but the real economy is sliding rapidly in to depression. It’ll be years before we crawl out of this – and the more we go with liberalism, the longer it will be take and the poorer we’ll get.

UPDATE: And the question is asked: Is the FDIC broke?

"Black Man Pleads Guilty to Posing as Obama-Hating White Supremacist on Facebook"

Mark Noonan

This is not surprising:

An African-American man from Mississippi admits posing as a white supremacist to send a death threat across state lines by Facebook.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says 20-year-old Dyron L. Hart of Poplarville pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to making a threat in November 2008.

Hart admitted creating a name and using a white supremacists’ photo to pose as a white man who planned to kill blacks because Barack Obama had been elected president.

He originally was charged with threatening three black students at Nicholls State — where he had attended one semester — but pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count.

He sent the threats from a computer in Poplarville.

The maximum sentence is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine; sentencing is Nov. 18.

There are, indeed, white racists in America – in a nation of 300 million people and 210 million white people, there might even be 10 or 20 million white racists. A tiny percentage, but certainly a large number of people. But what would make such a person – even if he had a burning, passionate hatred of black people – want to issue threats? Let alone carry out any such threats? The plain fact of the matter is that the chances of someone hating Obama based on his race sufficient to make him desire to take action against Obama is vanishingly small. It could happen, but it almost certainly won’t. But, such facts don’t fit the narrative…and so, here we have Mr. Hart.

Now, Mr. Hart might have been doing this entirely on his own hook, but I doubt it. It is in the left’s interest to have a heightened level of threats against Obama in order to create the story that to oppose Obama is to be in some way tied to the racists who are threatening him. Having people like Hart do what they do makes all opposition to Obama appear odious. And its not that someone has to hire Hart – just the right word or suggestion, here or there, and someone who shares the leftwing world view – and its penchant for lying in service to the cause – and you’ll get plenty like him out there.

We can expect more and more of this as opposition to Obama reaches crescendo – the left will stop at nothing.