In The Hands Of Children

Charlie the Cop sent me the following video clip of an Iraqi wedding reception. The celebration ended in tragedy because an adult acted recklessly and a child was not supervised.

As you watch this, I want you to use the following imagery; the adult is the US economy and the reckless child is Congress. The results are about the same.


The kid at the reception was too young to understand the risk he assumed when he took hold of the pistol. The results were predictable.

We expect our Senators and Representatives to understand the risks we all assume when they vote on spending measures. Again, the results were entirely predictable. The legislators and administration officials responsible for this financial debacle must be hald accountable for their reckless actions.

Gee, This Sounds Familar

A new form of Russian Roulette is being practiced, Russian Road Roulette and it is an exercise in homicidal insanity.

SOFIA - Bulgarian prosecutors are investigating a new gambling game in which drivers defy death by speeding through red lights for bets of up to 5,000 euros ($7,400), the chief prosecutor's office said Thursday.

Known as 'Russian road roulette', the driver must jump red lights at busy intersections at high speed and not crash into any other cars or pedestrians, according to local media reports. Onlookers also gamble on the result.

[..]In June, two people died after a motorcyclist crashed into an onlooker at a similar rally on Sofia's ring road.

Sounds a lot like what Barack Nikita Obongo and his Czar Politburo are doing to the US economy. Fasten your seat beltinskies comrades.

This Legislator Gets it

Unfortunately he is not an America politician, he is English.



UPDATE
He was just on tonight's Hannity Show. He really has some incredible insight based on England's destructive experience with socialist economic decision making.

Money line: "You can't borrow your way out of debt."

There's A Storm Abrewing

Lotsa stuff today. The Chicago Traders Market wants to have another Boston Tea Party, instead of tea they'll throw worthless derivatives into Lake Michigan.

It's CNBC but take a look anyway. The traders are angry that Obama is rewarding bad behavior by subsidizing losers' mortgages; lowering the mortgage rate isn't going to help either- 40% of these bad mortgages can't be saved if the rate drops to -2%, these people should never had mortgages in the first place.

Even the Messiah's own administration is lowering expectations on what the stimulus package can or can't do. From the Investor's Business Daily:

Seven-hundred eighty-seven billion dollars apparently doesn't go as far as it used to. Even before the ink was dry on the stimulus bill, the president and his deputies were hinting it may not work as promised.

[...]Now with the $787 billion on the books — an amount greater than the entire federal budget in 1982 — the administration is suddenly in full expectation-lowering mode, throwing out strong hints that it may have to go back for second helpings in a matter of months.

"Signing Stimulus, Obama Doesn't Rule Out More," is how the New York Times put it. And, indeed, Obama sounded almost dour about the bill he had so aggressively pushed to get passed.

I guess a trillion dollars just don't go as far as it used to. And maybe with the new Tea Party they can remember to toss that useless, lying asswipe Roland Burris into the Lake also. From the Chicago Tribune:

Sen. Roland "Tombstone" Burris (D-Lying Weasel) insisted he was the Real Roland Burris, which must mean that some sneaky impostor is out there, doing evil deeds in our senator's name.

Yet Real Roland or Fake Roland, nobody believed him, because he's such a weasel who didn't tell the truth to a state impeachment committee about discussing fundraising for the former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, as part of a deal to have Blago appoint Burris to fill the Senate seat of President Barack Obama.

If he had told the truth, he wouldn't be senator today, and as he chattered on about how Democratic ward bosses really love him, a Democrat in the crowd whispered to me.

"What's Barack saying? Where's House Speaker Michael J. Madigan? Their silence is deafening," the guy said. "What are they saying?"

Nothing.

Burris is in such a deep hole that Chicago Race Baiters Religious Association pastors are now trying to get him to resign:

CHICAGO - A Chicago minister tells The Associated Press he and other black pastors who previously supported Sen. Roland Burris now plan to ask him to resign.

The minister spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because a meeting with Burris hadn't yet been scheduled. He says the senator can no longer serve effectively.

In Phoenix, AZ, high school seniors mocked Obama's economic incentives. They just don't believe him. They have more sense as 18 year old students than the entire Democratic caucus in Congress.

"Overall I think it's a good idea, but he's not addressing the issues of the economic crisis," said Daudfar, a John McCain supporter who added he leans more toward being a moderate conservative. "The spending bill he just passed is just progressing the Democratic agenda rather than addressing the economic issues in the country."

Daudfar thinks Obama's plan is backward and deals with the "less important stuff" first. "Bailing out businesses" and "providing better regulatory systems for giving out money to businesses" should have been first, he said.

"If businesses can't afford to hire people, then people won't be able to work and pay off their mortgages," he said. "It's kind of like putting money into a funnel."

It's exactly like putting money into the crapper, Daudfar. And the stock market agrees witht he high school kids and not the so called economic hot shots in Washington. Today the Dow closed at a six year low and just about every other indicator is also in the crapper like Daudfar's funnel.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Dow industrials closed at a more than six-year low on Thursday as investor fears that banks could be nationalized drove their stocks to a 17-year low and a rise in the number people receiving jobless benefits to a record high stoked worries about the deepening recession.

After several near misses this week, blue chips blew through the November 20 bear market closing low in late trade, erasing a year-end rally built on hopes a new president would successfully tackle the deepening recession.

The Nasdaq fared the worst of the three major indexes after a disappointing outlook from Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) sent its stock down almost 8 percent and dragged down other technology shares, Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC maker, which warned its expects weak market conditions to persist, was also the Dow's biggest negative weight.

Yeeeehaw, ride the lightning.

Size Does Matter

Perhaps, just perhaps the lugnuts holding the wheels on the Obama racing team are starting to loosen up. If Alec Baldwin gets part of the picture, then even more moonbats cannot be far behind. Alec sounds off:

[...]the thing we have to remember, a friend of mine who is very close to the financial community in New York pointed out that Democrats have a lot of the responsibility for this as well. I mean, it was Clinton who killed the Glass-Steagall, and it happened under a Democratic president. Barney Frank and his committee, they, they kept propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saying everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's good. And it was his job to know everything wasn't fine. And Barney Frank let you down and let us down as well. And so, but I want to say there's blame to go both ways. But I will say, I want to, I maybe keep beating this to death, but I still think anyone in this Congress who voted to add $140 billion to that bill, they should be ashamed of themselves. That is a disgrace. It's a disgrace. This Congress is a disgrace, Democrat and Republican.

View the video here.

Mr. Baldwin must have taken a peek at his third quarter investment balance sheet.

I believe this; as long as liberals don't feel the pain, they go along with the program. But now their buddies in the government have screwed the financial pooch big time and it is hurting everyone - particularly the well papered and pampered Hollywood elite.

They tolerate the queers and queens as long as they profit from them. But let those profits evaporate, as over a trillion dollars of market equity went *poof* last week, then see what happens.

Look to see how many more actors, film directors and other libs grab a lugwrench and start yanking the wheels off the Obama chariot as their investments tank and the Democrats' role in this outrage unfolds.

Hell hath no fury like a liberal who loses his bank roll. Alec's fragile self esteem is closely aligned with his success which is measured by his paycheck. Size does matter after all.

Who Is Jamie Gorelick And What Has She To Do With The Wall Street Bailout??

One of the commentors here asked "Who is Jaime Gorelick, anyhow? Didn't she have something to do with 9-11 that made her emminently qualified to go into the Federal mortgage business and make millions?"

In the mid-1990's, Jamie Gorelick was a Deputy Attorney General in the Justice Department during the Clinton administration. She instituted the infamous "wall" that was erected between the FBI and the CIA that prevented them from sharing anti-terrorism intelligence and ultimately contributed to the intel failure that helped the 9-11 conspirators succeed in killing three thousand Americans.

Gorelick claims that she did not invent the "wall," which is a

set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it." Gorelick did invent the wall. The wall was not a set of procedures implementing FISA as construed by federal decisional law. To quote Gorelick's 1995 memorandum (something she carefully avoids doing), the procedures her memorandum put in place "go beyond what is legally required...[to] prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation." (Emphasis added.) As this rather straightforward English sentence illuminates, the wall exceeded the requirements of FISA and then-existing federal case law.

What the wall implemented was not the FISA statute as construed by the courts but rather Gorelick's overheated view of what would be useful to avoid being accused of misusing FISA. To be sure, it is often prudent for the government to hamstring itself beyond legal requirements; going-the-extra-mile improves the (already good) chances that courts will reject motions by defendants to suppress damaging evidence (like incriminating recorded conversations). It is, however, irresponsible for the government to hamstring itself when that means national security will be imperiled — which is what happens when agents are forbidden from communicating with one another.

She did impose the policies and procedures that aided terrorists in the murder of US citizens. Now, what does she have to do with the Wall Street bailout? Plenty. She went from one fiasco to another:

Even though she had no previous training nor experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed Vice Chairman of Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) from 1997 to 2003. She served alongside former Clinton Administration official Franklin Raines. During that period, Fannie Mae developed a $10 billion accounting scandal.

On March 25, 2002, Business Week interviewed Gorelick about the health of Fannie Mae. Gorelick is quoted as saying, "We believe we are managed safely. We are very pleased that Moody's gave us an A-minus in the area of bank financial strength -- without a reference to the government in any way. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions." One year later, Government Regulators "accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses".

In an additional scandal concerning falsified financial transactions that helped the company meet earnings targets for 1998, a "manipulation" that triggered multimillion-dollar bonuses for top executives. Gorelick received $779,625.

So this incompetent bumbler laid an egg at the Justice Department and then repeated her act at Fannie Mae. The Clinton administration - the grift that keeps on grifting.

Arrest All These Sons Of Bitches

While working for a law firm in 1994, Barack Obama, as reported in the Chicago Sun Times, sued CitiBank for not issuing enough subprime loans.

Look at this (Jawa Report). It's ten minutes long but it moves fast. Everyone should study it carefully as it builds up a case against the Democrats and their corrupt handling of the subprime mortgage industry. Bush (in 2003) and McCain (in 2005) seem to be the only ones who tried to head this off.

UPDATE: 9/29/08
YouTube has pulled this video.It was an incredibly effective anti-Obama piece and the free speech people at You Tube couldn't deal with it.

What Are You Paying For The Bail Out?

The following is available from the Internal Revenue Service Data Book 2007, Publication 55B, Washington, DC, issued March 2008.

In 2007 the US government collected 2.4 TRILLION dollars in taxes.

That's $2,396,290,997,000 - look here and select table #1. Look at the net collections after $295 billion in refunds.

Of the $2.4 trillion:
a) $368.5 billion came from income tax paid by corporations - 15.4%
b) $1.17 trillion came from income tax paid by individuals - 46.6%
c) $838 billion came from employment taxes (payroll tax such as FICA) - 35%
d) $26 billion came from estate (death) and gift taxes - 1.1%
e) $46 billion came from excise (gasoline, etc.) taxes - 2.0%

So let's figure that half of the $700 billion Wall Street Bail out is going to be funded by us, individual tax payers.

Last year 138.9 million individuals filed income tax (Table #2). Of course many of these were joint returns for married couples. This translates to the average income tax paid per return was $17,252.66. Of course that's doesn't mean anything; I paid nothing close to that and you the reader probably didn't either. If you did, well God bless you!

Using the IRS Table 1.1 for 2007 returns we can see just what our income tax burden was based on Adjusted Gross Income groupings. For there then it is possible to extrapolate what percentage of the $700 billion bail out you will pay based on what range your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) falls into.

Directions: under the section "All Returns: Selected Income and Tax Items" select Tax Years: and pick 2006 - this is the latest year available and will lead you to the spreadsheet named 06in11si. You can do the math too because, quite frankly, I don't trust myself after the per capita bomb in my previous post. I almost never make mistakes like that.

We'll use the 46.6% of all income tax collected from individual tax returns as our bench mark. That percentage (46.6%) of $700 billion is $326.2 billion.

The total 2006 individual income tax after credits was $1.023 trillion ($1,023,916,399,000 - this is a bit different than what the IRS says it collected in 2007 but it probably involves other things such as interest, fines, etc.).

Based on those numbers, the following spreadsheet is posted using Zoho which allows you to import and embed Excel type spreadsheets in blogs. What is really exciting is that this is an interactive spreadsheet - it allows you to input changes.

What I have done is produce a spreadsheet that allows you to see approximately what the GREAT WALL STREET BAILOUT OF 2008 will cost you depending on how what your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) is.

This is how it works. I have taken the 2006 IRS figures for AGI for the number of returns, amount of income taxes paid and what each AGI grouping will pay depending on their percentage of total income taxes paid. Then I divided that by the number of returns for each AGI grouping to arrive at how much each individual in that grouping will pay (Average Cost of Bail Out Per Individual Return).

If the cost of the Wall Street Bail Out changes to, say, $1 Trillion, and the percentage to 50% , just enter those values into the top ranges, cells B2 and B3. The Average Cost Per Individual Return will also change (rows 56 to 74), indicating how much it will cost you based on your AGI. Remember to input percentage changes as a decimal equivalent, i.e .48 (point 48) instead of just 48, or else you will get the wrong percentages.

This is probably a little too simplistic but it should serve as an indicator as to just how far the politicians are going to ram this bail out up your ass.

If anyone has a better idea on how this should work, by all means try it out yourself and let me know.



Note: One problem with this is that I cannot figure out how people reporting zero AGI still paid $57.7 million in income tax - unless these are penalties, fines or other forms of income that fall into a different category. Perhaps these are people financed by George Soros who have to figure out a way to account for all the money they have donated to Obama.

I'm Really Really Ticked

The more I think about it the more pissed off I get.

Those sons of bitches in Congress want to give away $700 billion as a reward to gross incompetence, greed, and probably every other evil even slightly related to ineptitude and we're supposed to go along with the program.

For the first time in my adulthood I got pissed enough to send emails to everybody, even to retiring Rep. Jim Walsh and the two Democratic senators of this State - Schumer and Clinton - yelling at them at how pissed I am and dontyoudaregiveacenttothosecrooks.

I yelled at them for shoving their thumbs up their asses while this pot was boiling for the past few years.

I am so sick of the current crop of politicians running around like Chicken Little screaming "Wall Street Is Falling!" Wall Street is not the entire US economy. There are banks right here where I live that are doing just fine because they don't get involved in high risk investments.

And it is high risk investments that have soured that is the cause of this mess.

I have spent most of my adult life trying to avoid debt. My wife and I scrimped and saved and just plain did without for the first twenty years of our marriage - living on a cop's salary and whatever I did on the side wasn't easy but we did it.

Our home mortgage was paid off in sixteen years. I helped my kids through college with cash - no loans - by busting my ass. The only debt we owe right now is two car loans. We have no oustanding debt for plastic - if it can't be paid for at the end of the month we don't buy it.

WHY THE HELL SHOULD I PAY FOR OTHER PEOPLE"S MISTAKES/STUPIDITY??

I do not live like a high roller Wall Street financier. We stay strictly within our means. Right now I am afraid to call my financial advisor to see what happened to our 401k's.

And the politicians want me to pay for this bullshit.

I normally avoid all cussing, but I am beside myself...

The Wrong Experts

I remember after the 1992 elections how the economic forecasts and dire predictions of the Democrats changed within days. From the "Worst Economy Since The Depression" to much more favorable news. I was astounded that these so called experts could think we were so stupid not to realize how they had tried to manipulate us. But then again, they did manipulate the election successfully. Clinton's economic policies wouldn't even begin to have nay effect until his first budget took effect in October of 1993, but as soon as January the hysterical MSM was granting him prowess in shaping America's economic fortunes for the better.

And they are at it again. When will the American people learn not to trust these liars?

Economists are hastily upgrading their forecasts for the US economy after a series of surprisingly strong reports suggesting the so-called "soft landing" may be over and growth is accelerating. Over the past week, surprises have come in stronger-than-expected reports on US job creation, the trade balance and retail sales -- all key contributors to economic activity.

And they are always "surprised." But only during a Republican administration.

"With the last of the major data in, we are now revising fourth quarter GDP to an above-trend 3.3 percent. A wide range of indicators have been stronger than xpected. Most important have been the strong consumption data and the surprising improvement in the trade balance."

The latest data defy predictions that the slump in real estate would filter into other areas of the economy, notably consumer spending. The latest data showed US employers added a healthy 167,000 new jobs in December, with unemployment holding at a low 4.5 percent.

Average wages were up 4.2 percent annually.

A separate report Friday showed US retail sales increased 0.9 percent in December.

Oops. Wrong again. Like Paul Krugman in his NY Times commentary just six weeks ago.