Yeah, right:

Fannie Mae is seeking an additional $10.7 billion in government aid after posting another massive quarterly loss as the taxpayer bill from the housing market bust keeps growing.

The mortgage finance company, seized by federal regulators last September, posted a second-quarter loss of $15.2 billion, or $2.67 per share, including $411 million in dividend payouts. That compares with a loss of $2.6 billion, or $2.54 per share, in the year-ago period.

The government, which seized control of Fannie Mae and its sibling Freddie Mac last September, has already spent about $85 billion to prop up the two companies. Fannie Mae’s new request from the Treasury Department will bring the total to nearly $96 billion. Freddie Mac is expected to report its quarterly results on Friday.

“We are dependent on the continued support of Treasury in order to continue operating our business,” Fannie Mae said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late Thursday.

And half of all homes with mortgages are expected to be upside down by 2011.

We’re not even close to the bottom. If you’re a liberal, I recommend investing heavily in stocks – especially financial stocks. This way, you’ll be so broke you won’t be able to bother us for a few years…but you should do it, because you’re convinced that tax and spend liberalism works…so, money where mouth is, right?

Because a “ruly mob” won’t do the trick – but the unruly ones are scaring the bejabbers out of the Democrats:

A video version of yesterday’s communique from DNC headquarters about mobs of right-wing extremists whose extreme mobbiness threatens to mob ObamaCare with extremism. All that’s missing are the captions you used to see in trailers for 50s horror movies. “THRILL to angry conservatives walking around with signs. TREMBLE as a woman holding an American flag yells at a congressman. SCREAM as Democrats absorb one one-millionth the degree of demonization George Bush suffered over eight years.”

No need for outrage, though. Instead, celebrate the fact that even with a Democratic president, a filibuster-proof Congress, and the lure of “free” ice cream in the form of socialized medicine, the left’s somehow managed to turn ObamaCare into a clusterfark of such epic proportions that their health-care message has now actually been reduced to “Don’t listen to the Republicans — they’re crazy.”

They simply don’t know what to do. You see, our liberals think they won in 2008 – and not just “win” in the sense of getting more votes and thus controlling the levers of power. No, they think “win” as in “we’ve won for good“. We conservatives were supposed to just blow away and not bother the liberals any more. Oh, to be sure, they’d tolerate an old conservative or two from time to time – as long as they were tame and didn’t actually try to do anything. But that whole nightmare of conservative action which showed up in 1980, 1984, 1994, 2002 and 2004 – that was all over with. Never again would liberals be out of power – the American people had finally woken up and realized that liberals are what they want.

And here we go just getting out there and getting in their faces and asking questions and making demands – as if we had even so much as a right to be consulted! Its just too much! So, it must be a nefarious plot by insurance companies and the evil, wicked, Vast, Right Wing Conspiracy raised from the crypt to corrupt the American people. And thus we’re just an unruly mob – a bunch of idiots who don’t understand that socialized medicine is what’s good for us.

November of 2010 will be a delight.

As I’ve always said, polls are best at spotting trends. Provided the pollster uses the same methodology and polls regularly, you can start to see how public opinion is moving, even if it turns out that the particular numbers are not spot-on.

Rasmussen does poll regularly, does use the same methodology and, in to the bargain, is usually spot on. So, this has got to be giving Democrats fits as they head home for the recess:

Support for Republican congressional candidates has risen to its highest level in recent years, giving the GOP a five-point lead over Democrats in the latest Congressional Ballot and stretching the out-of-power party’s lead to six weeks in a row.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

The numbers on Election Day last year were 47% Democrat, 41% GOP. Usually, the Democrats lead the “generic ballot”. I can’t recall a time the GOP led for such a sustained period of time.

2010 is a long way away – but it is getting closer all the time.

From the Gipper:

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.

Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help…

…Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people.

Let us also call for an end to the nit-picking, the harassment and over-regulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets.

Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine…

…A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way. – Ronald Reagan

Crisis of Confidence: America’s Government Losing Faith in Out-of-Touch Constituents

The sudden, awful realization that we’ve been had:

Seventy-one percent (71%) of U.S. voters say President Obama’s policies have increased the size of the federal deficit, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Only five percent (5%) say the president’s policies have cut the deficit, and 10% say they have had no impact. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

I do wonder who is in that 5% saying Obama has cut the deficit – that it the population of the real kool-aid drinkers.

It is, ultimately, their country and their lives at stake:

President Barack Obama and top U.S. military commanders are being pressed by senators and civilian advisers to more than double the size of Afghan security forces, a move that would cost billions of dollars.

In letters and face-to-face meetings, the lawmakers and the advisers have urged Obama, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan to boost the Afghan National Army and police from current levels of 175,000 to at least 400,000.

“Any further postponement” of a decision to support a surge in Afghan forces will hamper U.S. efforts to quell an insurgency in its eighth year, Senators Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote to the White House in a July 21 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.

General Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, will recommend a speedier expansion of Afghan forces beyond current targets in an assessment he will give within a month to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, according to a senior military official familiar with the review.

No matter how good our troops are, they can’t win this campaign for the Afghans. Just as in Iraq, eventually the Afghans will have to step up in sufficient numbers to take the main burden of crushing the enemy. We should be doing everything we can to get more Afghans in the field against the Taliban/al Qaeda forces.

I’m starting to feel that no one is in charge at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave…that things are just happening because low level staffers get the ball rolling and Obama is too busy looking Presidential to pay attention to detail:

…In the real world bestowing the Medal of Freedom on Mary Robinson is only important as a symbol. Take a look at the Medal of Freedom winners. There are many mediocre men and women on the list. But, overall, you will brim with pride, as the clichéd phrase puts it. Robinson had a commendable career as president of Ireland, mostly filled with symbolics, but important symbolics. It has been downhill ever since, a good deal of it in the gutter of anti-semitism.

She was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when the commission began to specialize in the practice of supporting governmental repression and calling it freedom–as, frankly, Obama has done with the burqa, also in Cairo. But Robinson’s biggest role on the world stage was as chair of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban. She planned it, she mostly ran it and she is responsible for that Witch’s Sabbath of hate against both Israel and America, actually the west and western values in general and in particular. Since then, she has been doing the time-consuming NGO thing, talking mostly to one another and soliciting grants from American foundations.

Robinson’s base in the world is the G-77 which has watched amiably as many of its member states increasingly preside over atrocities committed against their own inhabitants. Not much to honor here.

The administration will try to put a big smile on its face about the president honoring Mary Robinson. I’d bet, however, that there’s been a lot of shouting around the White House…and a lot of blame. Obama will smile through it all. But inside he’ll be seething. At his staff and at those of us who don’t just shut up…

I don’t know if Obama will be seething – he might not even understand what all the fuss is about. He might not even be fully aware, as he’s awarding the medal, just who is being honored, or why. Obama doesn’t seem to be good with hard facts. Platitudes are his forte’ – and his staff seems to be doing a better job keeping him to that than they used to…or, at least, they’ve prevented any major teleprompter malfunctions lately.

But who nominated this lady? I mean, who really nominated her? Who in the Obama Administration figured that the lady who headed up the Durban hate-fest was worthy not just of a Medal of Freedom, but of one of Obama’s first medals of freedom? Just how deep is anti-Semitism embedded in the Obama staff? For crying out loud, if only one or two non-anti-Semites had seen this coming down the pike, they could have swiftly killed it just by bringing it to the attention of senior White House staff.

What sort of government have we got?

This happened about a half mile away from my house:

Police say an interagency homeland security unit is looking for several men seen leaving the area after an explosion damaged equipment at a North Las Vegas construction site.

No injuries were reported, and authorities haven’t said what type of vehicle the men were in.

North Las Vegas police Sgt. Tim Bedwell says the apparent bomb blast left a football-sized hole in the side of a water truck.

Bedwell says several neighbors reported the explosion just after midnight at the construction site near Aliante Parkway and Grand Teton Drive.

He says police didn’t find the source of the noise until construction workers arrived about dawn and found the damage.

The Mrs was heading out to get a bagel and soda early this AM and the police blocked her path and turner her around. Other than what is in the story, we know nothing about what is going on. The water truck, for a while part of our local scenery, is parked in a vacant lot immediately adjacent to a large electric power substation.

Side note: No, I didn’t hear a darned thing.

Because maybe they can’t borrow as much as they’ll need:

China takes a pass on U.S. Treasuries

Two countries, the United States and China, are playing financial poker, with the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve on one side and China on the other.

On one side, wearing a visor and dark glasses, we have Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, who must fund our $1.8 trillion deficit. So the U.S. Treasury and the Fed are issuing record amounts of treasury securities. Last week alone the Treasury issued $200 billion of debt securities. The results of at least two auctions were a bit shaky.

At the table, opposite the U.S. Treasury, are the Chinese players, also wearing dark glasses. When the play went to China, China took a pass on two of last week’s auctions. The Chinese are worried about the high level of U.S. debt and are uncertain if they should keep buying U.S. Treasuries.

There is also the prospect that China can’t buy any more US debt because they aren’t selling enough in the US to obtain the money to buy US debt (it is a cruel ring of economic fate binding China and the United States together).

But whether its “can’t” or “won’t”, it all works out the same – if we can’t sell our bonds, then we can’t finance our spending and that means either massive cuts or massive increases in the supply of currency. Obama, being a liberal Democrat, simply won’t cut – in a pinch, he might cut a bit out of defense, but a lot of those defense workers pay union dues which supply Democrats with campaign cash, so there’s only so much which can be cut…and certainly not enough to cover things like hundreds of billions, or trillions, of dollars of new spending.

A rather tricky situation for which, as long as we’re governed by Obama and his liberal Democrats, there is no way out.