A Catholic rightwing extremist:

It is not morally possible for any Catholic to support abortion, euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, human cloning, or same-sex marriage. There are no ways around this, no justifications whatever. Why? For the simple reason that the Church holds these things to be intrinsically evil. They are evil in themselves, and no circumstances or subjective conditions can ever change that. – Fr. John Corapi

Nancy, we’re looking at you…

As I suspected all along:

The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation’s biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.

In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits.

The overall reaction to the stress tests, announced Thursday, has been generally positive. But the haggling between the government and the banks shows the sometimes-tense nature of the negotiations that occurred before the final results were made public.

Government officials defended their handling of the stress tests, saying they were responsive to industry feedback while maintaining the tests’ rigor.

When the Fed last month informed banks of its preliminary stress-test findings, executives at corporations including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. were furious with what they viewed as the Fed’s exaggerated capital holes. A senior executive at one bank fumed that the Fed’s initial estimate was “mind-numbingly” large. Bank of America was “shocked” when it saw its initial figure, which was more than $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

The banks pushed back – but since when does the regulating agency organize itself around the desire of the regulated to look as good possible? What likely happened here is a desire to avoid a complete collapse of the banking industry and a Dow of 2,000. The Fed – largely responsible for that part of our mess not caused by Fannie and Freddie – is playing fast and loose in order to avoid scrutiny while the banks and the Obama Administration are more than willing to go along for their own reasons. The only problem here is that if, as I suspect, our financial system is completely collapsed, then the longer we avoid facing it the worse it will ultimately be.

Our financial system is based on funny-money and set up in a crazy-quilt of various usurious programs which do little or nothing to advance the genuine wealth creation of making, mining and growing things. It all worked well for a while, but the only way we’ll get back on track is to ditch what we’ve been doing and essentially start over with a clean slate. Doing this, of course, will mean that we have to allow a lot of huge corporations to fail and, of course, we won’t have the funds for grandiose schemes to Europeanize America – and thus the Powers That Be are determined to pretend that all is well.

Its gonna really suck when everything hits the fan – but, we’ll survive. We’re Americans, after all, and once we clear out the corrupt cretins in DC, we’ll be able to start building again.

The news story:

A voter registration drive last year illegally required canvassers to meet quotas to keep their jobs and resulted in thousands of “garbage” registrations gumming up Clark County voter rolls, officials said Monday as they released a criminal complaint against the drive’s organizers.

The complaint names the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, as well as Chris Edwards, the group’s former Las Vegas field director, and Amy Busefink, who was regional director for voter registration.

In all, there are 26 charges of compensation for registration of voters and 13 charges of being a “principal” in the incident. An initial hearing has been set for 7:30 a.m. June 3 in Las Vegas Justice Court.

“In Nevada, it is unlawful for a person to provide compensation for registering voters that is based on the total number of voters a person registers,” said state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

ACORN’s canvassers, she said, had to gather at least 20 voter registrations a day to keep their jobs. There was also a bonus program, known as “blackjack” or “21 plus,” which rewarded employees with $5 extra per shift if they brought in 21 or more completed registrations.

Canvassers under pressure to keep their jobs turned in registrations with fake names and phony addresses — even, in one case, the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys.

“These practices are clearly a violation of Nevada law,” Cortez Masto said. “By structuring employment and compensation around a quota system, ACORN facilitated voter registration fraud in this state.”

You liberals out there still want to claim that ACORN, as an institution, is innocent and merely the victim of over-zealous employees?

What have you got? The fact that your man, Barry, was elevated to the White House at least partially on the back of illegal actions. Now Obama wants to shower taxpayer dollars on this corrupt, anti-American group. What say you?

The news story:

One of the nation’s largest liberal advocacy organizations, MoveOn.org , is resisting efforts to clear the Democratic primary field for Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter.

The political arm of MoveOn flexed its muscle Friday by releasing the results of an online poll that showed the vast majority of the group’s roughly 170,000 members in Pennsylvania — 85 percent — would consider supporting a Democratic challenger against Specter.

The group expressed concern over Specter’s vote against President Obama’s $3.4 billion budget just one day after defecting to the Democratic Party. MoveOn also cited comments Specter made in an appearance on “Meet the Press” last weekend suggesting he would oppose a public health insurance option that some Democrats would like to see included in any health care reform proposal.

Now, the story does go on to note that if Specter goes flat out kook left in his voting, a lot of MoveOn members will be willing to back him, but I still like the fact that these screwballs at MoveOn have a little bit of sense. Why should people who have worked desperately to enact an insanely destructive agenda allow the Democrat powers-that-be to saddle them with a person only moderately-insane? The Democratic party gets an advantage – securing a Senate seat on the cheap…but for the drooling morons of MoveOn, what do they get?

So, have at him, MoveOn…force the Democrats to either get Specter to go so far ’round the bend that Chuck Schumer looks conservative, or defeat him and get an even more batsh** crazy nominee. Either way, we GOPers are behind you 100% in this effort. Meanwhile I, personally, wish to congratulate you on a bit of backbone – after years of watching you bend over and say, “thank you sir, may I have another?”, its nice to see that there is a least one or two American blood cells remaining in your systems.

The proof:

…The government had to pay greater interest than expected in a sale of 30-year Treasurys. That is worrisome to traders because it could signal that it will become harder for Washington to finance its ambitious economic recovery plans. The higher interest rates also could push up costs for borrowing in areas like mortgages…

This means it will be harder to finance the massive debt Obama wants to run up, which means we’ll have to pay more to do so, which means deficits will be higher than expected, which means debt will rise faster than forecast…which means, not to put too fine a point on it, we’re screwed.

America’s New Economic Rule Number One:

You can’t spend your way to prosperity.

One of these days even liberals might figure that out.

From a Liberal extreme non-extremist:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around. – G K Chesterton

Those American Jews who voted for Obama really should have thought about this before they cast their ballots:

Once U.S. foreign policy is based on moral equivalence — that a Western democratic state is about the same as an undemocratic, radical authoritarian entity that embraces terrorism as a tool of state policy — then anything is possible, from calling for Israeli nuclear disarmament as part of an Iranian deal, to pretending that a Hamas ten-year truce is something other than a decade of chest-thumping before the final assault.

Given the fact that the vast majority of American Jews voted for Obama — despite clear indications that he would embrace radical changes in U.S. policy toward Israel — the politics of what is to come will be as fascinating as they will be tragic.

And given the Obama method of grandly professing the opposite of the reality that will soon follow (most ethical administration nominees in history lead to Geithner, Richardson, Daschle, Solis, etc.; no desire to interfere in the private sector means near nationalization of the banking, car, and soon health-care industries; commitment to public campaign financing equals first candidate to reject it in the general election; strong desire for fiscal sobriety translates into a $1.7 trillion annual deficit; Bush shredding the Constitution means adoption of Bush’s wiretaps, email intercepts, Predator attacks, Patriot Act, Iraq plan, renditions, etc., and on and on), the tell-tale sign of the final U.S. break with Israel will be a dramatic Obama hope-and-change declaration that “our historic commitment to Israel will remain unchanged.”

When we hear that, we know exactly what follows…

The problem with doing the right thing is that it is always, at the start, much harder than doing the wrong thing. Its harder to tell a child he must study than to allow him to watch TV for an extra 15 minutes. Its harder to tell a shiftless brother that you won’t bail him out any more than to give him $100 “just one more time”. Its harder to deal with securing peace for democratic Israel than it is to reach an accord with undemocratic Islamo-fascism. Democracy, liberty, justice, mercy, truth – these are all difficult, messy things which require diligent effort and great patience…tyranny, slavery, injustice, cruelty, lying – these are all easy things which, in order to have done, one doesn’t even have to do them…just allow them to happen.

We’ve got an extraordinarily difficult problem in the Middle East. It isn’t a problem entirely of our own making. It isn’t a problem we had no hand in creating. It isn’t a problem which happened over night. It isn’t a problem which commends itself to easy solutions. It does, however, commend itself to a simple solution – the solution is to insist upon freedom. Freedom in Israel, freedom in Gaza, freedom in Egypt, freedom in Lebanon, freedom in the West Bank, freedom in Syria, freedom in Iraq, freedom in Saudi Arabia, freedom in Iran…once everyone in the area is free, genuine agreements for the long term regulation of Middle Eastern affairs can be entered in to. As long as any part of it is un-free, only the most temporary and expedient things can be done. In order to get from here (mostly tyranny) to there (entirely free) there is a long, difficult process to go through. On the other hand, in order to get to a “peace deal” all that is required is that Israel be ruthlessly pressured into agreement and then we just go along with whatever situation the enemy wishes to create as one step in their long process of destroying Israel.

For all of the time from the foundation of Israel to 9/11, American policy revolved around trying to make a “peace deal” – some set of agreements which would allow Israel to exist. The problem was that as long as the other party to the deal – the Moslems – were living under tyrannical regimes, there was really no one to treat with. In other words, people who don’t obtain their just powers from the consent of the governed cannot enter into a peace deal – not really. The next dictator might easily repudiate the deal and, as we’ve seen happen all the time, the dictator of the day just finds it too convenient to use Israel as an external enemy to justify internal tyranny. After 9/11, President Bush and others finally figured out that, come what may, the only way to have peace in the Middle East was to secure for our Moslem brothers and sisters God’s gift to mankind – freedom. In Afghanistan and Iraq, a large step forward was taken…and while it was being taken and before domestic, American anti-war efforts reached crescendo, the rest of the Moslem world was taking note of the changed circumstances and loosening up the grip of tyranny. Now we stand at the crossroads – the job stand about 1/4 done…what will Obama do?

The worry is that given his moral cowardice and lack of knowledge in this area that he will fall for the sirens of defeatism and “peace deal” regarding the Middle East. We know that Obama throws difficult problems and persons under the bus at the first opportunity and we know, just from reading his biography, that he doesn’t know about strategic and military affairs. Carried away by his own megalomania, he might think that the applause of France and the Arab League and the frightened agreement of Israel under pressure might be the real thing – that he’s bringing peace. If Obama pursues a peace deal as opposed to peace, then we might as well get ready to dig a lot of graves – peace comes from freedom, which allows justice to flourish…as our lefty friends say (quite mindlessly, as they don’t know what the words actually mean), “no justice, no peace” and there can’t be justice if most of the people in the area are held to bondage.

To listen to our MSM, it sure is…unemployment isn’t rising as fast as it was, things aren’t as bad as some predicted…you know, the whole slew of things which tend to indicate a boom is right around the corner, right? Well, no. In fact, the sort of economic news we’re getting today would be painted in stark, hideous terms…if a Republican were in the White House. Since this is the Age of Obamunism, the party line is that things are double-plus-good while un-good news is down the Memory Hole. Here’s a story to indicate that things are, in fact, continuing to get worse:

This morning, Fannie Mae (FNM) announced that it had lost another $23 billion in the quarter, and would have to call down $19 billion more in taxpayer support. It also said that it would face losses as far as the eye can see.

Do you know how much we’ve committed to backstopping Fannie and its partner-in-crime Freddie Mac (FRE)? $400 BILLION! Back in February that was doubled from the original $200 billion.

But the news of the quarterly loss is getting hardly any attention. Nothing here at the NYT business section, for example. Nothing at the blogs that were going nuts when AIG was revealed to have paid out bonuses back in March.

The problem is that the Fannie and Freddie disasters don’t fit into any conventional media narrative…

And neither does such things as the continuing rapid collapse of home values in, say, Las Vegas. I figure my $400,000 home is now worth about $125,000, in theory. The “in theory” bit is because I don’t think I could actually sell my home if I had to put it on the market – sure, homes are being sold in Las Vegas but they are invariably foreclosed homes and they are going for a song. No one is going to buy my house when a better, larger house can be had on “please take this off my hands” terms. Fannie and Freddie, of course, are integral to the housing business and thus the $23 billion loss last quarter and the projected, un-ending losses to come tell the true story of our economy. Its collapsed, boys and girls…we’re not trying for a soft landing, we’re not trying to turn things around…we’re just masturbating economically while the Fed fires up the printing presses and Obama begs the Chinese to buy US bonds.

I can already hear our liberal friends – “no! You have to give Obama time! It took Bush 8 years to mess the economy up.” Its impossible to talk a liberal out of his view, given their views are built on invincible ignorance, but I will say this: the problem we’re in is not Obama’s fault but it is the fault of the very sorts of policies that Obama is enacting. In other words, Obama’s prescription for arsenic poisoning is to give us a dose of cyanide. The doctors gave my Dad a blood transfusion a few weeks before he died and for a while there he was looking a lot better – but that sheen of health was temporary as the organism, in its fundamentals, was shut down. We’re shut down – Obama is going to shove some ersatz blood into our system; it might make us glow for a bit, but it won’t change the fundamentals.

We have to cut spending, cut taxes, free up regulation and do all we can to encourage people to make, mine and grow things. We need, not more bridges to nowhere, but more farms, more factories, more mines. And for crying out loud, we don’t need them in the form of corrupt, complacent dinosaurs like GM! We need, in the end, a whole, new economy – all Obama promises us is a blood transfusion into the corpse of the old economy.

Tucked into Obama’s absurdly small budget cuts are a few things which will sting, if enacted:

President Obama voted in the Senate to provide additional funding for a program targeted for elimination by his budget that provides states a federal subsidy to offset the costs of jailing illegal immigrants.

Killing the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAPP) would save $400 million, according to Obama’s budget for fiscal 2010 released Thursday. It’s one of the largest non-defense discretionary cuts proposed in the president’s budget.

For Obama, this is win, win, win.

If it goes through, he’s able to shore up support in the pro-illegal immigration movement.

If it gets restored, he can still say he tried to stop the program to the pro-illegal immigrant movement while at the same time say he’s signed legislation designed to secure the border.

No matter what happens, its still part of his budget cut amount, so he gets to talk about how me made the “tough choices” on the budget.

Its the act of a dishonest man heading up a dishonest Administration – and thus its a perfect fit for the modern, Democrat party.

When we got on his case about having an “Office of the President-Elect” – going through Dad’s papers, I came across this letter transcribed here:

Office of the President-Elect

Richard M. Nixon

Washington, D.C.

December 2, 1968

Mr. G. Noonan

(Address Redacted)

Dear Mr. Noonan:

As you know, I have pledged to bring into this Administration men and women who by their qualities of youthfulness, judgment, intelligence and creativity, can make significant contributions to our country. I seek the best minds in America to mee the challenges of this rapidly changing world. To find them, I ask for your active participation and assistance.

You, as a leader, are in a position to know and recommend exceptional individuals. The persons you select should complete the enclosed form and return it to you. I ask that you then attach your comments. My staff will carefully review all recommendations for inclusion in our reservoir of talent from which appointments will be made.

I will appreciate greatly, Mr. Noonan, your taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this all-important program.

Sincerely,

Richard M. Nixon

RMN/jww

Enclosures

The family hope is that we didn’t have a hand in recommending anyone eventually convicted. Be that as it may, Obama ain’t the first megalomaniac elected President, it would seem.