Headlines

How the ACLU is setting up Trump for a field day in 2020

Buffet: If a bank needs a government bailout, CEO and spouse should lose ‘net worth’

Massive rocket barrage deep into Israel

Brooks: ‘Probably no collusion’ but Trump ‘acts’ like he’s colluding

North Korea fires several short-range projectiles into sea

Country House wins Kentucky Derby after favorite disqualified

Guaido says he overestimated military support in Venezuela ...

Barney Frank: Beto ‘may be regretting he’s straight’

Biden gives Trump nickname ‘clown’

Iran has mobilized all resources to sell oil in ‘grey market,’ state media says

5G signal could jam satellite signals that help with weather forecasting

Buttigieg: I ‘check myself’ to understand benefits from my whiteness

Swamp Creatures

Senator Al Franken has just joined the host of current and previous  pervs in Congress ... Ted Kennedy, Bob Menendez, Lyndon Johnson, Anthony Weiner, JFK, Wilbur Mills, Newt Gingrich, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Bob Packwood, Joe Biden, Gerry Studds,  260 anonymous Congresspersons who had previously cost the U.S. taxpayers $15 million in sexual abuse settlements, and 50 current Congresspersons who are on a known "Creep List" ... see: Conservative Review Article.

For lots more perv names, see: Supreme Find Law.

And these are just the ones who have been exposed. How many more have existed is obviously a lot larger. And we wonder why so little gets done in the swamp ... they all seem preoccupied with groping others and exposing themselves.

Afterward: Should I add Barack Obama to the above perv list? See: DC Clothesline.

Skunk at the Garden Party

President Obama was effective in blaming the Republicans for leaving him an economy that was "in the ditch." It's a complicated story, but, in a way, he was right in that George W. Bush allowed the daring duo of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd to corrupt the US mortgage market to the point where financiers found a way to turn these two bozos naive mandate into an economy killer ... a Ponzi scheme which took in most of the world financial markets.

Now the Democrats have released another skunk at Trump's garden party ... Obamacare ... which should have collapsed before Obama left office ... however it was kept on life support through a series of executive actions that postponed its worst mandates. Now, unless the Republicans untie Gruber's Gordian knot, they will be blamed by millions of poor suckers on expanded Medicaid of taking away their health insurance. As it turns out this is not as many that lost their "bad apple" health insurance under ACA, but nevertheless many in Congress still fear being sprayed by Obama's pole cat.

Up Chuck Schumer is counting on it ...

Headlines

Judge refuses to change transgender man's name

Barney Frank: Orlando reinforces case for surveillance of 'Islamic Element'

San Fransisco battles epidemic of auto burglaries

London Muslim Mayor bans sexy women in advertisements

TX Walmart hostage taker, Mohammad Moghaddam, shot dead

2/3 of new illegal immigrants visa overstays

Children of immigrants most fruitful ground for jihad

Summer [movie] box office nightmare ... revenue -22%

Supreme Court: Puerto Rico can't restructure debt

[Orlando] killer visited club dozen times ... used gay dating app

Update: Over 100 Syrian refugees entering the U.S. -- per day!

High cholesterol does not cause heart disease'

Clinton State Department: Blocked probe into killer's mosque

Here We Go Again

The sub-prime mortgage fiasco of 2008 should have taught us a lesson. With the encouragement of Barney Frank and other political cockroaches, the banking industry and mortgage brokers gave mortgages to hundreds of thousands of people who didn’t have the wherewithal or the intention to pay them off. They used these houses like an ATM machine … pulling out cash whenever crooked appraisers or cozy transactions made it look like these houses were worth more … which most often they weren’t.

And the mortgage originators went along with this fraud because they could offload these mortgages onto Fannie Mae as fast as the documents could be created … collecting large origination fees in the process. This mortgage bubble was also compounded by another grifting scheme … the packaging of bunches of mortgages into “securities” which were sold like bonds and given premium ratings when they were clearly undeserving. It got even more complicated and dangerous with the insuring of these mortgage securities … which I won’t go into here.

But the lesson has, unfortunately not seem to have been learned. What should every deserving con-artist get for free next? Why a car of course. So now car dealers (mostly used-car dealers) are giving car loans to buyers who do not really qualify for such credit … sub-prime borrowers if you will. And these car loans are then being packaged up and sold to lenders seeking higher yields than can be had most other places … see: CNBC Story for the gory details. And as long as hanky-panky in the rating of these auto-loan securities does not occur ... like it did with mortgage-backed securities, things should be OK. But I’m not sure that I would have as much faith in this process as Apple, Google and 3M apparently have.

Ser-vice Animals

Like, it seems, almost everything else in this country, a good idea is being turned into another air-conditioned corner of hell.  Today’s case in point is service animals … animals that are necessary to aid physically or mentally handicapped individuals … super seeing-eye dogs if you will. Guidelines for same (see: NMEDA Story) are ignored and Chiwawa dogs have suddenly become indispensable for many a dowager’s mental well being.

More and more what was a reasonable solution for various handicaps is corrupted so that it loses all meaning and becomes just another way around sane social norms. As we have seen, handicapped parking has been abused to the point of insanity … now service-animal special permits are being handed out like Wendell Willkie buttons so that any valid use becomes immediately suspect.

Animals of all sorts … dogs, monkeys, ferrets, pigs, and even snakes are given this suspect designations by doctors and vets out for the quick buck … see: NCHPAD Article. Shame on the abusers ... for, as a result, it will not be too many years before legitimate use of this privilege will be lost. For a recent examples of this abuse see: Powerline Blog.

I predict that it won’t be too long before we start to see humans showing up as service animals … remember Barney Frank on a leash?

Terms of Endearment

The following is a test of your perspicacity and political savvy.   You are herein asked (as a comment to this blog) to attach one or more of these terms of endearment to one or more of the following people: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Joe Biden, Justin Bieber, John Boehner, George W. Bush, Dick Chaney, Hugo Chavez, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barney Frank, Lady Gaga, Rush Limbaugh, Madonna, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Mitt Romney, Mohamed Morsi, Bibi Netanyahu, Nancy Pelosi, Vladamir Putin, Tim Tebow  (NO PROFANITIES PLEASE!)

Ankle Pecker
Ass Wipe
Babinzo
Badonkadonk

Blaggard

Blatherskite

Boob
Bubblehead
Bumpkin

Charlatan
Chawbacon
Chowderhead
Clown
Cockalorum
Cockroach

Coxcomb
Creep

Curmudgeon
Despot
Diaper Licker
Dolt
Doofus
Drip

Dunderhead
Dweeb
Fliptwiddle

Fop
Fruitloop
Guttersnipe

Harridan
Hick
Honeyfugler
Horndog
Horse's Petute
Ignoramus
Imp

Jackanape

Jamoke
Knave
Kook
Leech
Lickspittle
Lout
Lowlife
Meathead

Misanthrope

Miscreant
Moonbat
Mooncalf

Mountebank

Mugwump
Muttonhead

Namby Pamby

Nebbish

Nimrod
Ninnyhammer

Noddy

Nudnik
Oinker
Peck's bad boy

Pecksniffian

Pettifogger
Pillack
Pipsqueek

Poltroon
Pond Scum

Popinjay
Puddin Head
Puke
Puzzlewit

Quidnunc
Quisling

Rapscallion

Rascal
Reprobate

Rogue
Rotter
Rumpswab
Scallywag
Scamp
Scapegrace

Schlemiel

Schmozzle
Schmuck

Schlub
Scoundrel

Shlump

Shmegegi

Shrew

Skellum

Slattern
Sleezeball
Snake Oil Salesman

Snollygoster

Sop

Troglodyte
Twerp
Twit

Varlet
Wack-a-doodle
Wisenheimer
Wingnut
Wise Ass
Wowser
Yahoo

Yenta

Yokel

Barney's Lead

The Internet question of the day is, "Why was Barney Frank wearing a leather collar and leash when he checked-in to his hotel in Charlotte today for the convention?"  Perhaps he had heard the Democratic dog whistle?

Juxtaposition XXX

Republican's Barney Frank

Democrat's Newt Gingrich

Acknowledgment: Thanks for this idea goes to my wife, Jeanette.

Frankly dear ...

There is joy in Mudville ... Barney Frank is retiring from Congress next year.  There are few politicians who have done more to damage their country than this bloated poltroon.  Good riddance!  (Perhaps I am being too kind to him?)

Robbing the Bank

Permit me an indulgence … I offer here an analogy to try to explain our sub-prime mortgage meltdown in late 2008 that cost the United States at least one trillion dollars and likely elected Barack Obama to the Presidency. This analogy will use a simple bank-robbery scenario to try to explain the actors and their roles in this (to me) criminal enterprise. Here is the cast:

- The Master Planners – Barney Frank and Chris Dodd whose drive for universal home ownership was the diabolical felonious scheme behind this travesty (with the template of the Community Development Act of 1974.)

- The Bank Robbers – Countrywide Finance, GMAC, Quicken and the myriad of other bucket-shop mortgage origination companies that sprung up during the last years before the meltdown … along with the complicity of the hundreds of thousands of homeowners who got these no-documentation mortgages using chicanery and mendacity.

- The Money Launderers (legitimizing the pelf acquired in this robbery) – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac abetted by all those financial institutions (e.g.s: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc.) that packaged up these mortgages (Collateralized Debt Obligations -- CDOs) to sell to these fences … AND all those players in the Credit-Default Swaps casino (AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, etc.)

- The Get-Away Car Drivers – the Credit Rating Agencies that gave these CDO’s unrealistically high credit ratings

- The Bank’s Security Force – those myriad Federal financial regulatory agencies who spent the period during the actual robbery lounging in the bank’s break room playing pinochle and watching porn on the bank’s security-system screens.

- The Bank’s Depositors (who lost their money in the robbery) –ordinary United States’ citizen-schlubs.

Freddie’s Fannie

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) – “When the dust settles, the federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be the most expensive government rescue of the financial crisis -- it already stands at $153 billion and counting.” (see: Subprime Mortgage Losses)

Can we start taking this out of Barney Frank’s allowance?

The Constitution

The U.S. House of Representatives will commence its 112th session tomorrow by reading the U.S. Constitution. This act has been called a “dog-and-pony show” (Alan Colmes on his blog), “meaningless political theater” (the National Examiner), a “gimmick” (Ezra Klein, on MSNBC ), a “stunt … arrogant” (the Fort Lauderdale SunSentinel), an “empty, pompous, self-righteous act … racist” (the New York Times), “ritualistic … total nonsense … propaganda” (Jerry Nadler, congressman from New York City), a “tea-party fetish” (Rachael Maddow on her blog), a “symbolic sop to the tea party” (LA Times), “a total waste of time” (Time Magazine), an “air-kiss to the tea party” (Barney Frank), and “a bit of pageantry” (The Daily Kos). And I found these numerous brick bats in only about 20 minutes of searching on Google.

Does the majority of the Democrat party hate the Constitution? I certainly hope not. But, if in fact many of them do, may I suggest that they refuse to take their oaths of office when they are sworn into federal office. After all they then do swear (right hand raised and left hand on the Bible) “to preserve, defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States.” And, if they do refuse this oath, then they should not be allowed to take their elected offices. So there! … simple enough?

Addendum: Speaker Boehner did a brilliant thing yesterday. He made all the members of the House reswear their oath of office. See: HERE. I wonder how many Democrats actually followed his direction ... or had their fingers crossed?

Useful Idiots

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is not a friend of the United States. Along with his ties to terrorism, Chavez intends to install Iranian missiles in his country, a scant 1300 miles from the U.S. shore (see Iran missiles). After recent setbacks in National Assembly elections in his country (see recent elections) , Hugo Chavez has made an end run around Venezuela’s rapidly crumbling democratic process and grabbed dictatorial powers (see dictatorial powers). This sulfur-smelling dictator of this oil-rich South American country has gradually amassed power over the last twelve years to the point where now he is unlikely to be legally deposed or even voted out of office.

This gradualism should be an object-lesson for us all on how such loss of freedom comes about … like the proverbial frog in the pot of cold water that is gradually being brought to a boil. Joseph Stalin liked to call those fellow-traveler Westerners who supported him in his reign of terror in Russia as “useful idiots.” Unfortunately, we again have a litany of such brain-dead liberals who worship at the feet of this despotic leader Chavez. The list is predictably extensive but here is a gallery of a few of the most notables:

Danny Glover

Sean Penn

Joe Kennedy II

Kevin Spacey

Cindy Sheehan

Barney Frank

Noam Chomsky

Oliver Stone

Jimmy Carter

Juxtaposition III

Acknowledgment: Bill O'Reilly

 

Bittersweet

Bitter
Massachussets -- Barney Frank, Suzanne Bump, John Tierney, Deval Patrick, Jim McGovern, Bill Keating, Martha/Marsha Coakley
California -- ("Call me Senator") Boxer, Governor Moonbeam
Connecticut -- Michael Blumenthal
Nevada -- Harry Reid (polling, -4 percentage points; election, +5 percentage points ???)

Sweet
Pretty much the rest of the Nation

Our Next President …

* Will have, as a campaign slogan, “Hype and Something Else”
* Will have, as a campaign motto, “A Newer Ending”
* Will have written a book titled “It Takes a Neighborhood to Dream of My Father Going Rogue”
* Will be androgynous (shemale?)
* Will admit to doing designer drugs in the past but be vague about present-day usage
* Will have been born in Ethiopia inside the U.S. Embassy
* Will be a Navaho/Vietnamese cross-breed
* Will have, as a campaign theme song, “There’s No Tomorrow”
* Will have, as a campaign manager, Phil Spector
* Will promise not to raise taxes [too much]
* Will have raised, through the Internet and Iphones, $25 billion in campaign funds
* Will choose Barney Frank, the defeated House incumbent, as Vice President
* Will name George Soros as Secretary of the Treasury
* Will name Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of Defense
* Will name Chelsea Clinton as Secretary of State
* Will name [the disbarred] Sandy Berger as Attorney General
* Will name Richard Simmons as Surgeon General
* Will redecorate the White House in the style of a bordello
* Will pardon Bernard Madoff
* Will win the Nobel Prize in Economics, Physics, Medicine, and Peace
* Will also win an Oscar, a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and Megabucks
* Will have a pet mongrel dog named “Rush”

Dirtbag Award

This blog site has just instituted the "Dirtbag Award."  This will be a periodic prize given to that person or persons in the national news who have distinguished themselves by craven behavior far beyond the call of civilized behavior.  There is no voting for this award beyond the gag reflexes of the keeper of this blog.

Now for the first bestowing of this prize (see picture above) ... trumpets please.  Our initial recipient is John Tierney, Congressman from the 6th District of Massachusetts, whose wife, Patricia, just pled guilty in federal court to money laundering and tax evasion.  These charges stem from Patricia Tierney's management of a bank account that illegally funneled $7 million of proceeds from the off-shore (Antigua) on-line gambling operations of her brothers, Robert and Daniel Eremian, indicted in August of this year on charges of racketeering, money laundering and operating an illegal gambling business.  Although congressman Tierney denies any hint or knowledge of his wife's illicit activities, he did vote in 2006 (along with Barney Frank and six other Massachusetts congressmen) against the bill that made the laundering of such gambling proceeds illegal (the bill passed in the House 317-93 and became law).  Read the whole story here.

Ditch the Republicans?

Yesterday at a Democrat fundraiser, our august prexy, Barack Obama, gave his partisan argument as to why a Democrat Congress deserves to win the elections in November. Basically, he said that Bush and the rest of the Republicans drove our economy into the ditch in 2008. Obama was subsequently elected and thus he [sigh] was required to patch up this accident. With that sly grin of his, he went on to say that the Democrats have gotten the car (our economy) out of the ditch and back on the asphalt. And he added with a snide guffaw … now the Republicans want the keys back. In his best sophomoric manner, he said, “No! You can’t drive. We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.”

Perhaps what he said has a modicum of metaphoric truth to it, however please allow me to modify and extend his remarks with the following observations:

- The Republicans were not alone in driving our economy into the ditch. Clearly, by insisting on the irrational expansion of sub-prime mortgages, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and their cronies in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did their share of reckless driving. The major sin that Bush and his Republican compatriots in Congress can be accused of is not pushing back hard enough.

- Yes, the Democrats have stopped our economy from sliding further into the ditch. But to say that we are back on the asphalt is, at best, political hyperbole. At worst, it is demagoguery. Economic growth is clearly anemic and unemployment still hovers around 10%. In fact, we are in serious jeopardy of slipping back into negative GNP growth. And this is occurring after monstrous government deficit spending that cannot be sustained. Such a Keynesian economic experiment has once again been proven misguided … and if the Bush tax cuts are left to expire this coming January, it is quite likely that Obama’s stretch limo will also end up back in the economic ditch.

- Even public opinion has now decided that it is Obama’s recession. See: Obama's Fault. After 18 months in office, Obama needs to stop pushing his ultra-liberal agenda at the expense of job seekers and economic growth. He is rapidly losing Bush as a scapegoat and would be advised to start accepting responsibility for our economic malaise. Perhaps, as Obama was decrying at the fundraiser, the Republicans might make an equivalent mess of things if they win back majorities in Congress this fall, but then we would still have some hope that things will finally change. I kind of suspect that if the tea partiers have anything to say about it, things will.

Golden Goldman

(Goldman Sachs Tower -- New Jersey)

American International Group (AIG) just released the ordered list of counterparty payments that it had made last fall from the taxpayers’ and the Federal Reserve Bank’s initial $115 billion in bailout money to this company. According to this morning’s NY Times, Goldman Sachs was second on this recipient list at $8.1 billion. However, since then, AIG has received an additional $58 billion from the U.S. Treasury and Goldman now tops the list at $12.9 billion in total bailout largess … presumably to make good on additional Credit Default Swaps or other financial derivatives that Goldman took out with AIG. (Other large benefactors from U.S. taxpayer’s and Fed’s money, via AIG, include Deutsche Bank @ $11.8 billion, Societe Generale @ $11.9 billion, Merrill Lynch @ $6.8 billion, Barclays Bank @$8.5 billion, and UBS @ $5 billion.)

Now, there are many questions surrounding such counterparty payments … such as:

- Did Goldman Sachs or any other counterparty buy these Credit Default Swaps at a discount and then turn around and sell them back to AIG at 100 cents on the dollar? (Question originally posed by Senator Shelby from Alabama in a recent Senate hearing.)

- Did AIG negotiate with any or all these counterparties to pay them something less than full par value for these CDSs as would be expected? (Question originally asked in a recent House hearing on AIG).

- Since Hank Paulson, the then Secretary of the Treasury under G.W. Bush, was a former Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO … were such pass-through payments to Goldman Sachs from the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank a possible conflict of interest? At the time, was Paulson made aware of this seeming breach of faith?

- The new Obama administration, under which an additional $58 billion has been funneled into AIG (and, as a consequence, an additional $4.8 billion into Goldman Sachs) also seems somewhat cozy with Goldman Sachs. Robert Rubin, a transition team economic advisor to Obama is an ex-Goldman co-Chairman and, according to Wikipedia, "Goldman was the second largest donor to the Barack Obama campaign." It is estimated that Goldman Sachs execs gave close to a million dollars to Obama (see Obama Donors) including James Johnson, a Goldman Sachs board member and former chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae, and Bruce Heyman, Managing Director, Private Wealth Mgt at Goldman. Also Larry Summers, Director of the President Obama’s National Economic Council; and Tim Geithner, the new Secretary of the Treasury and last fall’s head of the NY Federal Reserve Bank are both former protégés of Robert Rubin.

As far as I am concerned the current kerfuffle about the $165 million in bonuses paid out to AIG executives is a mere distraction from the much bigger mega-scandal of over $170 billion of make-good payments that AIG is funneling into the world’s financial counterparty community. This is the true AIG, Federal Reserve Bank, and U.S. Treasury misfeasance that Barney Frank and the rest of his masked bandits in Congress need to be investigating with their typical grandstanding vigor … instead of trying to grab headlines with this AIG bonus sidebar.