Blogs For Victory

Before becoming a state legislator and then U.S. Congresswoman for MN CD-6, Michele Bachmann was a tax lawyer; so when it comes to things financial, unlike other congresscritters, she didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.

In the following press release, Michele has laid out the beginnings of what I think is the best plan yet put forward:

Bachmann Statement on the $700 Billion Wall Street Bailout Bill"

Today marks a historic moment for America as a solid bipartisan majority of Congress rejected the fatally flawed Paulson Plan. Standing shoulder to shoulder with taxpayers, we declared that we can do better.

"As I’ve stated previously, this plan was rushed, unworkable, and short-sighted. A majority of House Republicans have parted ways with President Bush on this plan and we demand that alternative proposals be put on the table. There is universal agreement that this plan was bad, but its supporters claimed it was the only option. There were alternatives available, but Speaker Pelosi and the Administration chose to ignore them and used every parliamentary trick in the book to stifle debate. Now, they will have to listen to the voices of American taxpayers who refuse to open their checkbooks to Wall Street to write a $700 billion check with no strings attached.

"I support a plan that would have Wall Street bail itself out, not hardworking taxpayers, by requiring institutions to insure troublesome assets that are causing today’s credit crunch. It would suspend mark-to-market accounting, which forces companies to take losses on artificially devalued assets on an artificial timetable, to give investors more confidence.

"The plan I support would break up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — government sponsored enterprises that are at the heart of this crisis — so that the encumbered taxpayer no longer backs them — implicitly or explicitly — and so that they do not artificially grow larger than the market will allow. We cannot pass legislation that sets America up for a Groundhog Day reprise of this mess and that means changing the problem at its core – the GSEs.

"Furthermore, the plan I support suspends capital-punishing tax rates to bring more capital into the U.S. markets rather than our foreign competitors. And, the plan ensures the Federal Reserve’s attention is focused on long-term price stability rather than short term economic growth. Finally, it requires the US Treasury to write rules keeping executives who made the risky decisions from personally profiting from them with excessive compensation or golden parachutes all at the expense of taxpayers. We can’t have a market that only condones risky behavior. The balance between risk and reward is an important part of the free market.

"My colleagues and I stand ready and willing to negotiate with any parties on a plan that will help stabilize our financial markets and relieve the liquidity crisis without exposing taxpayers to a $700 billion bailout debacle."

It is my fervent hope that cooler heads prevail, and a rush-to-action without forethought will not be the order of the day. But at the same time, we need to hold those who are accountable, accountable. As I commented on Noodles’ post:

If something is to be done, the blame game needs to be played. If we do not take stock of what was done wrong, history will invariably repeat itself. I’m just not willing to fork over 700 billion dollars and then forget about it, and go on back to "business as usual" only for the same thing to happen again 10 years down the road. Today, the stock market gained much of what it lost yesterday.. (so I don’t believe that a depression-era crash is imminent) Rome wasn’t built in a day, and this mess wasn’t created overnight. To go ahead and "do something" just because it’s expected is a fools’ errand. Time must be taken to come up with a comprehensive plan that will avoid the gladhanding and other crap that got us into this mess.

The bottom line is that the CEOs, congresscritters and their close allies who were involved in and complicit with creating this mess need to literally do a perp walk. This ‘closure’ of the issues will serve a two-fold purpose; first, it will let investors and retirement fund holders know that those who are guilty have been brought to justice; second, it will send a clear message that further abuses will not be tolerated.

As for the solution to actually getting out of this mess, I believe that Congresswoman Bachmann’s plan provides an effective roadmap toward economic recovery.

 

 

…and so true.

Today, McCain-Palin 2008 released its latest television ad, called “Rein.”

Looks like ACORN is working overtime to steal this election for Obama.

A Milwaukee woman is charged in what appears to be the state’s first election fraud case of the season. 21-year-old Endalyn Adams is accused of submitting dozens of false voter registration applications to the city.

It was her job to sign up potential voters for the Community Voters’ Project and she could have been fired if she didn’t submit 15 registrations per day, according to prosecutors. Authorities said it amounts to a quota. The same thing happened in the 2004 presidential contest and the state responded by banning payments for each registration an outside group submits. It was supposed to remove the incentive for submitting false names.

Milwaukee prosecutors said Adams is now one of 49 people being investigated as a part of two groups the Voters’ Project, and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Prosecutors allege she submitted well over 50 false names and the city was able to remove them all from its voter list.

Wisconsin is a state I believe George W. Bush won in 2004, but was stolen for John Kerry. This is why it is important for McCain not only to win key battleground states, but to win outside the margin of fraud.

Make no mistake about it.. Obammunists are desperate to get Barack Hussein Obama elected.. they’ll stop at nothing — not even fraud — to get him in.

Leaving aside the nattering nabobs of negativism on the right and the liars on the left, McCain speaks to Joe and Jane Average:

Sarah and I have news for the big-spending, smooth-talking, me-first, country-second crowd in Washington and on Wall Street:

Change is coming!

We need reform in Washington and on Wall Street. When the financial crisis threatened the economic security of all Americans, I laid out principles to protect hardworking Americans. I believed that inaction was not an option.

I put my campaign on hold for a couple days last week to fight for a rescue plan that put you and your economic security first. I fought for a plan that protected taxpayers, homeowners, consumers and small business owners.

I went to Washington last week to make sure that the taxpayers of Ohio and across this great country were not left footing the bill for mistakes made on Wall Street and in Washington.

Some people have criticized my decision, but I will never, ever be a president who sits on the sidelines when this country faces a crisis. Some of you may have noticed, but it’s not my style to simply “phone it in.”

I am a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. I believe our leaders belong “in the Arena” when our country faces a challenge. I’ve never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I’m not going to stop now.

Senator Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn’t want to get involved. Then he was “monitoring the situation.” That’s not leadership, that’s watching from the sidelines.

And watching from the sidelines is exactly what got us into this mess. It was the lack of accountability and oversight that put your tax dollars on the line. But it shouldn’t be surprising that Senator Obama isn’t interested in protecting your tax dollars.

Senator Obama has proposed more than 860 billion dollars in new spending. He was asked in our debate Friday to name a single program he would consider cutting to help our country through this crisis, and he struggled to name a single program!

Senator Obama is a fan of all that spending because he’s always cheering for higher taxes or against tax relief. He’s voted that way 94 different times.

Two times, on March 14, 2008 and June 4, 2008, in the Democratic budget resolution, he voted to raise taxes on people making just 42,000 dollars per year. He even said at the time that this vote for higher taxes on the middle class was “getting our nation’s priorities back on track.” Then something amazing happened: on Friday night, he looked the American people in the eye and said it never happened. My friends, we need a President who will always tell the American people the truth.

Senator Obama’s record of higher taxes and more spending isn’t going to help “95 percent” of Americans, as he likes to say: it’s going to hurt 100 percent of us by growing government, slowing growth, and destroying jobs.

Obama is, indeed, just part of the problem…another in a long line of liberals who claim to fight for the little guy but whose whole being is absorbed in gathering personal wealth and power..to live a life of the privileged elite, insulated from the day to day concerns of the American people. It is good all around that McCain noted Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum about the arena – allow me to quote:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

That is the sort of man John McCain is, and the sort of woman Sarah Palin is, too. Obama? He’s stood aside from every tough call he’s ever been matched against – afraid to wreck his image with the risk of failure, even if it is to be a glorious failure fighting for a noble cause. Obama is the archetype of the “cold and timid” soul – the lukewarm man who is so justly condemned in theology, and who would be the bane of the United States – and the world – should he ever obtain the White House.

We need people like McCain and Palin who will dive in, feet first, polls and pundits be damned. McCain is catching a lot of flack for heading back to DC…but the country called, and the man with the servant’s heart answered the call. There probably wasn’t even much debate about it…America faced a crisis, and McCain knew that is place was at his post, doing what he was supposed to do. Obama fled his post – and was only dragooned back to his place by others, and even then he fell silent and with an entirely disgusting cowardice, refused to either support or condemn the late, defeated bail out package. The only thing we know for certain about Obama and the crisis is that he views it as a means for attacking McCain, as if that will help a single homeowner, or provide an iota of hope in America.

Covered in dust and sweat and daring greatly, McCain has already proven himself the better man, and it is my prayer that he’ll one day be the better President.

We’re not supposed to leave God in the pew:

Catholics need to wake up when it comes to politics, and stop leaving “God in the pew,” says a Vatican aide.

Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said this today when he addressed a conference organized by Retinopera, a network of Italian organizations that promote the Church’s social teachings.

The meeting, under way in Assisi, is reflecting on the idea of the common good and, according to its organizers, seeks “to consider development understood as a moral question.”

Bishop Crepaldi said Benedict XVI’s call in Cagliari, Sardinia, earlier this month for “the birth of a new generation of Christians involved in society and politics” was addressed to the Christian communities “who, as far as the formation new generations involved in society and politics is concerned, seem to be falling asleep.”

The bishop explained the need for Catholic laity involved in politics in the context of the “the idea, perhaps unexpressed, that secularization is an unstoppable process, a kind of ‘destiny’ of the West if not the entire planet.”

“Secularization, as God’s ejection from the world to the point that he ceases to speak to it, is not the destiny of modernity,” the bishop remarked.

The prelate noted this is precisely “the principal challenge” that Pope John Paul II faced, and that Benedict XVI is currently confronting. “We must confidently join them as real protagonists, and not see ourselves as tired bit players in a script recited by others.”

We can surrender the field to the secularists, or we can get out there and do battle for what we know is right. The crisis we face today isn’t really economic, but moral…only in a demoralized society which is sunk in despair could we get a situation where politicians connive with corporate bosses to defraud the American people…and then these same people blame those who fought against them, and demand that the people defrauded pony up to fix the problem. It is we, the believers, who have allowed this to happen – because we’ve been asleep at the switch, and afraid to tell the truth to those who are destroying our civilization.

The great battle here in the United States is, of course, the upcoming election – and its not really about Barack Obama. He’s a nobody – the problem is that he’s such a weak, ill-informed and morally confused man that those who seek to destroy Judeo-Christian civilization will find him easy to manipulate for their own ends. If we Christians refuse the battle – or temporize in our judgments – then we’ll get an Obama who will agree to appoint the most kook left judges imaginable…not because Obama wants kook left judges, but because he doesn’t know any better, and corrupt advisors will prevail upon him to make the appointments. You think Roe is horrific? Wait until an Obama-appointee decides that people have a right to euthanize their aged parents, or that taxpayers must pay for abortions…its coming, if we just sit back and allow it to happen.

Get out there and fight – as Obama put it to his troops, get in their faces and let them know how you feel…call them on their lies, each and every time they say them; tell them they are doing evil, even if they don’t recognize it. With mercy and love mixed with firmness and determination, lets carry the battle to them, and defeat them for the benefit of our civilization.

Lot of pundits are saying this, that and the other thing about what McCain must do…my answer to them is: any of you ever run for President?

How about we give the guy who wants to win his chance to do so? If McCain loses, we can pick apart his campaign to determine what failed and what worked…but while we’re waiting for the result, lets humbly hold fire and let McCain and Palin do their campaign the way they think best. I get the strong impression that they both want to win and think they can do so…and given this I figure they are trying their very best. They also problably know a few things about the state of the campaign we’re not privy to, especially those things McCain/Palin have planed for the next four weeks.

Relax, fellow GOPers – enjoy the show, and lets just see what happens.

Which is substantially less than in 2004:

According to data from across 11 networks, the first presidential debate on September 26 between John McCain and Barack Obama drew 52.4 million viewers.

The TV audience for the first presidential debate of the 2008 election was roughly 16% smaller than the audience for the first debate between President Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 election, which drew 62.5 million viewers on September 30, 2004.

Very odd – we had the two most watched conventions in history, and then debate viewership becomes a dud…what the heck is going on out there? If you look at the history of debate viewership, Friday’s debate doesn’t even make into the top ten – whether you count number of viewers or percentage of households (the number one for each of these is Reagan/Carter and Kennedy/Nixon, respectively). This is a crucial election with a nation at war and in crisis…and people had better things to do with their time on Friday.

I’ve been getting a sensation – there’s no other way to describe it – that people are rather angry at the whole process and about the whole mess in DC. Could it be that people are now tuning out the election and what may have been a high turnout election will end up low turnout? Will anger and Congress’ fiasco turn into a generalized anti-incumbent trend in the voting booth? Do the accepted figures for party ID and likely voter hold any water? Does anyone have a clue about what is going to happen?

I don’t. Heck, I’m not even going to bother trying to guess any more. What will happen, will happen – and I’m just going to do the Christian thing and place my trust in God.

UPDATE: Jay Cost over at Real Clear Politics rushes in where I fear to tread – but, then again, he is generally smarter than me about this stuff:

Immediately prior to the start of the Democratic National Convention, Obama led in the RCP average 45.5% to 43.9%. In June, he had an average lead of 47.1% to 42.4%. So, from June to the beginning of the conventions, McCain whittled down Obama’s lead from 4.5 points to 1.6 points. The Republican National Convention put him ahead of Obama, but recent events have wiped that lead away. Currently, the race stands roughly where it did in June, though McCain is in a slightly better position.

It stands to reason that the financial situation has been a campaign “moment” that has favored Barack Obama. So far, its effect is similar to him winning the nomination in June or heading to Europe in July.

A additional few points are worth noting.

First, the number of undecided voters has increased in the last three weeks, from a low of 6.3% of the electorate on 9/8 to 8.8% last night.

Second, the polls themselves have been very volatile this month. The Gallup tracking poll had a crazy week last week, and individual pollsters are disagreeing with each other quite a bit. Much of the disagreement has to do with McCain’s share of the vote. The standard deviation of McCain’s share in the current RCP average is 2.8%. Obama’s is 2.0%. [The standard deviation is the average distance between an individual poll’s result and the average of all polls.] By comparison, the final RCP average in 2004 had John Kerry’s standard deviation at 1.7% and Bush’s at 1.3%. This is a sign of volatility in the current race. Pollsters are finding fairly divergent results.

Its clear that Obama is currently ahead in the polls – but one, even today, cannot say with certainty who would win if the vote were tomorrow.

And yet the mainstream media is curiously silent…

While Barack Obama has long downplayed his connection to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the violent Weather Underground radical group, new documents show the two worked much more closely together in starting an educational foundation than has been previously known.

Recently released board-meeting minutes for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge show the two were present together at least six times in 1995 as the foundation’s members discussed how to organize and operate the project, which was Ayers’ brainchild.

Obama has always acknowledged he and Ayers both worked at the foundation, but has insisted they never had more than a passing acquaintance.

Peter Kirsanow, over at NRO, notes the media silence:

It’s been nearly a week since Stanley Kurtz presented evidence that Sen. Obama has seriously misrepresented his relationship with William Ayers, yet there’s no indication that news organizations are pressing the candidate for an explanation.

Among other things, Stanley shows that it’s reasonable to conclude that Ayers selected Obama, then a ” young and inexperienced lawyer”, to chair the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. There, Obama and Ayers directed substantial sums of money to radical organizations (see Stanley’s article today via the web briefing).

A few years later, Obama launched his political career at a gathering at Ayers home. The Ayers-Obama relationship certainly appears to be more like a mentor—protégé relationship than it does Obama’s description of a random acquaintance of two guys who happen to live in the same neighborhood.

Is this country going to elect someone who has a relationship with a domestic terrorist? Not a chance. Once this story gets the attention it deserves, Obama will be toast.

Kevin noted yesterday that despite the objections of the fallen soldier’s family, Barack Obama continues to wear the bracelet with the soldier’s name on it and using it as a political tool.

What I find just as horrible as Barack Obama using a fallen soldier’s life for political purposes against the family’s wishes was his apparent lack of caring enough about the soldier that he couldn’t even remember his name during the debate, and had to look at it, in order to read the name:

From Charles Hurt via the New York Post:

The results are in, and Barack Obama clearly lost the Dueling Bracelets segment of Friday night’s debate at Ole Miss.

It began when John McCain mentioned a bracelet he wears on the campaign trail that was worn by a soldier killed in Iraq.

As he often does while campaigning, McCain told how the soldier’s mother gave it to him as a reminder to make sure her son’s death “was not in vain.”

Obama wasn’t about to get left out of the patriotic symbolism.

“I’ve got a bracelet, too,” he said.

Then things seemed to go bad.

“From Sergeant . . .” he paused awkwardly as he fumbled through the layers of his suit jacket and shirt, looking for the bracelet with the soldier’s name.

“From the mother of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek,” Obama finally said.

The Obama spin is that he was merely attemping to show the bracelet, but few are buying that one:

“McCain knew the name on his bracelet. Obama had to read the name on his,” fumed Bob Arnold from Fayetteville, Ga.

“I don’t think that this guy’s life is exactly burned into the memory of Obama,” Lyle Shive said. “Sincerity is not Obama’s strong suit.”

Char DeWalt, a wife and mother of naval aviators, said the moment was telling.

“Obama is an elitist who only wears the bracelet in a feeble attempt to make points,” she said. “Nice try, but it didn’t work.”

“Never Forget” is something said a lot. Whether it’s about the Holocaust, 9/11, or fallen soldiers, it is something most of us take seriously. Unfortunately, Barack Obama doesn’t.