This is how we got into this mess

George Will in today's WashPost:


The book’s subtitle could be: “Cry ‘Compassion’ and Let Slip the Dogs of Cupidity.” Or: “How James Johnson and Others (Mostly Democrats) Made the Great Recession.” The book is another cautionary tale about government’s terrifying self-confidence. It is, the authors say, “a story of what happens when Washington decides, in its infinite wisdom, that every living, breathing citizen should own a home.”

The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act pressured banks to relax lending standards to dispense mortgages more broadly across communities. In 1992, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston purported to identify racial discrimination in the application of traditional lending standards to those, Morgenson and Rosner write, “whose incomes, assets, or abilities to pay fell far below the traditional homeowner spectrum.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/burning-down-the-house/2011/06/30/AGeRSGuH_story.html

Everybody has a crazy uncle

Biden to Union Members: If You Vote Republican, Don't Ask Me For Any Help

Fiercely patriotic

...nothing wrong with that.

We are fiercely patriotic. The overlooked reality in the debate about American “exceptionalism” is that most Americans don’t believe it’s debatable. In a 2010 poll, 77 percent of us said that “whatever its faults,” the United States “has the best system of government in the world.” In the 2003-04 World Values Survey, 74 percent of Americans felt strongly that they’d “rather be a citizen of my country than any other.” This surpassed any other nationality. Comparable responses were 58 percent for Canadians, 37 percent for South Koreans and 18 percent for Germans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/radicals-reactionaries-and-an-unhappy-fourth/2011/07/02/AGx3dvwH_story.html?hpid=z3

Dems in Mass

THE MASSACHUSETTS WAY: “Just because you flunk the bar exam seven times doesn’t mean you can’t become a judge. At least not in Massachusetts, and not if one of your brothers is already a (Jane Swift-appointed) judge and another one is a big-time lobbyist who donated more than $100,000 to Beacon Hill pols. It also doesn’t hurt if you were hired into the hackerama by none other than Jailbird Jackie Bulger, Whitey’s ex-con brother.”

Red Wine, very good for you.

As strange as it sounds, a new research study published in the FASEB Journal, suggests that the "healthy" ingredient in red wine, resveratrol, may prevent the negative effects that spaceflight and sedentary lifestyles have on people. 

The report describes experiments in rats that simulated the weightlessness of spaceflight, during which the group fed resveratrol did not develop insulin resistance or a loss of bone mineral density, as did those who were not fed resveratrol.

The Border

July 4 warning: Texas says don't go to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

The Juárez-Lincoln bridge over the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, is near the U.S. border crossing at Laredo, Texas. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

By Mary ForgioneLos Angeles Times Daily Travel & Deal blogger

The state of Texas is warning Americans to avoid travel to the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo this holiday weekend because of an anticipated surge in drug cartel violence aimed at Americans.

Stimulus paid $278,000 per job 'saved'

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-s-economists-stimulus-has-cost-278000-job_576014.html

Another reason we need sweeping change

Senate Held 25-Second Session on Friday

Fire it up

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Our racist presidential past

‘WHITES ARE LIARS’ — AUDACITY OF RACISM: OBAMA’S 20-YEAR MENTOR REV. WRIGHT TELLS CHURCH YOUTH ALL WHITES ARE LIARS…OVER AND OVER IN A LONG SOUND BITE

People even 6 months ago did not say this to the press.

Senator blasts Obama: 'I don't know why he even wants to be president' 

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson accuses Obama of 'phoning it in' and decries the pass given to him by the media

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/#ixzz1R3M5PtbR

When Newsweek turns on a Dem...

Newsweek's Evan Thomas rips Obama speech: 'He was being a God [expletive] Democrat!' 

Thomas, grandson of six-time Socialist candidate for president Norman Thomas, says President Obama is playing politics and not articulating the importance of reaching a debt ceiling agreement

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/#ixzz1R3LMclbS

Only leftist think expectations are racist.

LA Schools: Homework Is Racist!

The soft bigotry of low expectations:

How to deal with the rude K-12 achievement gap in Los Angeles? District officials have a new solution that should be pretty popular all-around.

Based on the theory that homework is more likely to be completed by kids with a secure home life and involved parents — aka, the white middle class — LAUSD is forcing teachers to cap homework at 10 percent of a student’s grade, beginning next month.

The plump 50's is a myth

Hollywood Auction Ends Myth of Zaftig Marilyn.

We should never again hear anyone declare that Marilyn Monroe  a size 12, a size 14 or any other stand-in for full-figured, zaftig or plump. Fifteen thousand people have now seen dramatic evidence to the contrary. Monroe was, in fact, teeny-tiny.

The 15,000 were the visitors who turned out over eight days to oooh and aaah at the preview exhibit for the June 18 auction of Debbie Reynolds’sextraordinary collection of Hollywood costumes, props and other memorabilia. . . . In fact, the average waist measurement of the four Monroe dresses was a mere 22 inches, according to Lisa Urban, the Hollywood consultant who dressed the mannequins and took measurements for me. Even Monroe’s bust was a modest 34 inches.

That’s not an anecdote. That’s data.

The other actresses’ costumes provided further context. “It’s like half a person,” marveled a visitor at the sight of Claudette Colbert’s gold-lame “Cleopatra” gown (waist 18 inches) “That waist is the size of my thigh,” said a tall, slim man, looking at Carole Lombard’s dress from “No Man of Her Own” (a slight exaggeration — it was 21 inches). Approaching Katharine Hepburn’s “Mary of Scotland” costumes, a plump woman declared with a mixture of envy and disgust, “Another skinny one.”

The claim that movie stars were heftier in the 1950s is apparently an invention.

Looking more and more like a set up of a man who could have been President of France

HOW RICH IS THIS IRONY? “The NY Post article discussed here indicates the maid who accused Srauss-Kahn of rape was part of a prostitution/illegal immigrant ring in which the union which placed members at the Sofitel was intimately (pardon the expression) involved. I assume that union is the New York Hotel Workers’ Union, which makes this editorial titled ‘New York is the wrong place to prey on hotel workers..’ on their website too rich in irony.”

No, but no one trust the Chinese numbers. Remember this. Last year the most trust worthy stat our of China was electrical output.

COULD CHINA BE THE NEXT GREECE? “The Chinese government, which just produced its first national audit of local finances, announced this week that local governments could owe as much as 30% of China’s GDP. That’s a good deal more than the government’s official debt load of less than 20% of GDP. And some analysts are putting China’s real debt levels at three to four times those levels.”

Not what you want to hear on your wedding day

Prince Albert of Monaco faces paternity test

 

Prince faces test after his wedding to Charlene Wittstock following claims that he has fathered a third child out of wedlock.

Repubs got rid of a tax yesterday. It was Temporary for 35 years

'Temporary' 0.2% Federal Unemployment Surtax Expires Today After 35 Years

Today marked the demise of the "temporary" 0.2% Federal Unemployment Tax Act surtax, originally enacted in 1976 and subsequently extended six times. The purpose of the “temporary” surtax was to replenish revenues used to fund Federal unemployment benefits paid in the wake of the 1973-75 recession. The House Ways & Means Committee refused to extend the tax, reducing federal tax revenues by $15 billion over the next ten years ($14 per employee per year). In his 2012 budget, President Obama proposed making the surtax permanent.

Great minds thinking outside the box?

Michele Bachmann Backs One-Year Income Tax Holiday

Boston Globe, In N.H. Visit, Bachmann Praises Moratorium on US Income Tax:

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann suggested yesterday that she would support imposing a moratorium on the federal income tax as a way to boost the economy. ...

Her comments on the income tax came in response to a question from Don Gorman, a former New Hampshire state representative from the Libertarian Party. Gorman asked Bachmann to comment on his suggestion to improve the economy: "Put a moratorium on the entire income tax for one year for every citizen in this country and watch this country take off."

"That's awesome," Bachmann responded. "You will be happy to know that a colleague of mine from Texas, [Representative] Louie Gohmert, gave that suggestion." Bachmann said Gorman's prediction about the proposal's effect on the economy was on target. "If we would have allowed every American to take that much more money home in their pockets, what would they have done?" Bachmann said. "They would have paid their bills. They would have spent it. They would have grown their businesses. They would have grown the economy."

For more, see Forbes, Michele Bachmann On Board With Tax Holiday.

Bill Clinton Backs Repatriation Tax Holiday

Bloomberg, Bill Clinton Backs U.S. Tax Holiday on Foreign Profits, With Caveats:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton endorsed a tax holiday on repatriating offshore profits with conditions, taking a position contrary to the Obama administration.

How to lie with stats. This is a meaningless headline. You can not tell if the increased occurred in the common years (1981 to 2000) of in the two out years (1971 to 1980) and (2001 to 2010). (Further, the data is suspect as temps have dropped slightly in the 10 years and the report does not account for the urbanization of weather stations..d

Statewide changes in annual "normal temperatures" (1981-2010 compared to 1971-2000).

Average U.S. Temperature Increases by 0.5 Degrees F

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2011) — According to the 1981-2010 normals to be released by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) on July 1, temperatures across the United States were on average, approximately 0.5 degree F warmer than the 1971-2000 time period.

If you want to know what is wrong with prosecutors, think about this. THe DA and the police took the word of a whore over a banker.

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  IMF Accuser Was Hotel Hooker

Day 3: has anyone noticed?

UPDATE: Minnesota Government Shuts Down...