The KnickerBlogger

The Last Post.

2008-11-05T15:32:00.002-05:00

I thought today a good day to end this blog, since it marks the final nail in the coffin of the old republic and the beginning of new "America" - white liberals enthusiastically welcome Obama as a quasi messiah who will cleanse them of white guilt and 'prove' racism has been transcended, but in reality, they have elected a Madhi. Not that McCain would have been much better, he perhaps would have kept the republic on life support a couple of years longer, but it is certain that Obama will end it swiftly.

Wild prediction? The people I have been listening to correctly forecast the Iraq war would be a disaster, the WMD were false, the Neocons would destroy the Republican party, that the easy money policies of the Fed and cheap mortgages would cause economic disaster. Now those things have come to pass. "My people" are predicting end of this nation and the very possibly necessity for session or armed resistance to a tyrannical, unconstitutional government.

If the government is no longer following the constitution than it is not longer running on any authority but power, and that power must be challenged. The time for words will be over soon, and I am getting a jump on things. The long march of the sixties is here, and its going to get ugly fast. I can no longer spend time hammering out out warnings, bitter comments and I told you sos, it's time for action.

My final bit of advice:: Get gun, learn to defend yourself.

It’s David Axelrod’s Reality Show …

2008-10-31T14:10:00.002-05:00

From STeve Sailer (who has a great biography about Obama out)

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It’s David Axelrod’s Reality Show …

[Steve Sailer] @ 2:57 pm [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

and we’re just living in it.

From the NYT:

Following the Script: Obama, McCain and ‘The West Wing’
By BRIAN STELTER
When Eli Attie, a writer for “The West Wing,” prepared to plot some episodes about a young Democratic congressman’s unlikely presidential bid, he picked up the phone and called David Axelrod.
Mr. Attie, a former speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, and Mr. Axelrod, a political consultant, had crossed campaign trails before. “I just called him and said, ‘Tell me about Barack Obama,’ ” Mr. Attie said.
Days after Mr. Obama, then an Illinois state senator, delivered an address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the two men held several long conversations about his refusal to be defined by his race and his aspirations to bridge the partisan divide. Mr. Axelrod was then working on Mr. Obama’s campaign for the United States Senate; he is now Mr. Obama’a chief strategist.
Four years later, the writers of “The West Wing” are watching in amazement as the election plays out. The parallels between the final two seasons of the series (it ended its run on NBC in May 2006) and the current political season are unmistakable.

Italics are mine.

Isn’t it remarkable that 20 months into the Obama campaign, the New York Times doesn’t pay any attention to the candidate’s own 460 pages about “a boy’s search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American;” and how “I can embrace my black brothers and sisters, whether in this country or in Africa, and affirm a common destiny …” and instead prints as fact the talking points of his hired gun spinmeister: “his refusal to be defined by his race and his aspirations to bridge the partisan divide”?

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What's amazing is that the American people still turn to 'the media' for their perception of reality.

Can't Wait to See What America Will Be Like...

2008-10-31T08:44:00.002-05:00

Wrong on South Africa - and what else?

[Patrick Cleburne] @ 2:32 am [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

Hard on Ilana Mercer’s lucid summary here of the upcoming South African disaster: Black Rule Brings Inevitable To South Africa. New York Times Reports It, Sort Of. October 19 2008 comes high-quality proof: South Africa’s Jews have accelerated their rate of departure.

The euphoria that permeated all sectors of the South African population with its first democratic election in 1994 has degenerated into widespread pessimism with the forced resignation of President Thabo Mbeki….With the election of the controversial Jacob Zuma as president of the African National Congress at the party’s national congress at the end of last year, many young Jews are thinking about emigrating.

Amid political turmoil, emigration from South Africa is again on rise By Suzanne Belling JTA 10/23/08

After leveling off for several years, Jewish emigration from South Africa again is on the rise…While no exact statistics figures are available — emigres generally do not make their permanent departure official — the Israel Center at the South African Zionist Federation sees a 300 percent increase in aliyah over last year’s 178 emigrants…. From a peak of 120,000 in the 1970s, the South African Jewish population has declined to approximately 75,000 today

From the American point of view the interesting and significant point is that the South African Jewish community was crucially involved for many years in the effort to overthrow Apartheid. This was the system of racial political control by which the Dutch-descended Afrikaners, the majority of the white community, endeavored in the latter half of the 20th Century to entrench their domination of the country. For example, Helen Suzman was for 13 years the only anti-Apartheid member of the South African Parliament. Joe Slovo, a life-long Communist, was a decisive influence in the main Black political movement, the African National Congress, which today effectively monopolizes political power in the country.

In their optimistic view of what Black rule would do for South Africa, these people and their community were totally wrong, and the Afrikaners totally right – for obvious and well-known reasons.

Ironically, the South African Jewish community is and has always been ardently Zionist, supporting the Israelis in building the type of ethnocentric community they denied to their Afrikaner hosts.

This is food for thought in contemplating the overwhelming support the Hedge Fund community is giving Barack Obama. As I pointed I have pointed out, to a large degree this arises from the heavily Jewish nature of this “industry”.

Unfortunately, as the example of the dying South African Jewish community shows, consensus Jewish political enthusiasms have a history of being disastrously ill judged - and even lethal to themselves.

Let alone to the rest of their countrymen .

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Though there are obviously are exceptions, the same pattern is evident with the "jewish community' here - ardent support of Israel and Zionism, AND multiculturalism and policies DESIGNED to make whites a minority in America. Curious.

I don't think it represents the views of "Jews" at large - any more than the far left views of the Episcopal Church represent the views of the parishioners (indeed, judged by the diminishing membership, it seems to be in opposition to it). Rather, I think it represents the views of the Jewish elite, and in turn the pundits generated by their think tanks.

In addition this duplicitous ethnic posturing is the norm for all ethnic groups - an in group vs out group strategy -

AMERICA'S HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

2008-10-30T12:28:00.002-05:00

by steve sailer probably one of the most insightful journalists working today...

AMERICA'S HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

BARACK OBAMA'S STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE

The fundamental irony of Sen. Barack Obama’s
Presidential candidacy is that no nominee in living memory has
been so misunderstood by the press and public, and yet no
other candidate has ever written so intimately or eloquently (or,
to be frank, endlessly) about his “deepest commitments.”
While journalists have swarmed to Alaska with admirable
alacrity to ferret out every detail of Sarah Palin‘s energetic life,
the media have drawn a curtain of admiring incomprehension in
front of Obama’s own exquisitely written autobiography, Dreams
from My Father. Because few have taken the trouble to
appreciate Obama on his own terms, the politician functions as
our national blank slate upon which we sketch out our social
fantasies.

While many have supported Obama in 2008 because he
seems to them better than the alternatives, he has also
famously electrified throngs of voters. Yet, the reasons for their
enthusiasm are often contradictory.

http://www.vdare.com/half-blood_prince/
In the U.S., Barack Obama turns out to be a man of
the left who seeks to use government to redistribute
wealth to his own race, but who has sought white support
because he has found he is perceived as not really "black
enough" to be a black leader—greatly to his distress. The
evidence for this is Obama's own memoir, which is very
honestly subtitled A Story of Race and Inheritance. Steve
Sailer says: "This isn't a debate between Barack Obama
and some guy named Steve. My book is, fundamentally, a
debate between Barack Obama and his own
autobiography. I'm just emceeing that debate."
Nevertheless, Steve guesses that an Obama first
term will be cautious. He suggests that Obama's true
radicalism will not emerge until after his re-election in
2012.
I disagree. I think the contradictions that Steve has
identified in this book will turn any Obama Presidency into
a four-year O.J. Simpson trial and that the consequent
melt-down will compare to the Chernobyl of the Carter
Presidency in its destructive partisan effects.

Is There Someting Just Obscene...

2008-10-22T13:16:00.005-05:00

about Bruce Ratner still trying to bilk and scam the public as we enter into a deep recession? The IRS just grandfathered in tax exempt PILOTS for Ratner and Bloomberg's other corrupt friends building Yankee and Shea Stadiums...

Am I the only one that finds it extraordinary in a time when the tax burden will inevitably increase for middle class taxpayers because of this ill-conceived 'bailout' of Wall Street and criminal banks?

"Unmitigated gall" might describe Ratner's behavior, but its business as usual- our so called power elite are currently engaging in an outright looting of American taxpayer- on a scale that even dwarfed the Oligarch looting of Russia. No sign of caution, no hint of prudence.

Once again the only thing that's really come to light is the degree of Ratner's corruption and power - each day that goes by Ratner becomes less and less worried what people think, and signs of blatant corruption (such as Markowitz's 'charities' )and back door deals - which this IRS ruling obviously is.

Does the law, does democracy mean a thing anymore? It is increasingly like the ESDC 'process' which they now, if inadvertently, admit was a total sham.

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On a related note, on the pages of the NYT Warren Buffet tries to sooth American nerves and encourage us to invest. No one finds it funny, that someone who has been so callous towards America and the plight of the American middle class, suddenly feigns concern for our well being?

Now, they are putting their cards (and wallets) behind Obama (like the not so curious ACORN-Ratner alliance) who presumably will deal the death blow to the American Nation state, and their imagined utopia (Which conveniently needs a ruling elite) will become a reality.

Oh it will become a reality, just not a pretty one.

A Preview of Life Under Boss Obama

2008-10-13T09:00:00.002-05:00

Missouri Sheriffs' and Prosecutors' Obama 'Truth Squad' Getting Old Media Silence

By Tom Blumer (Bio | Archive)
September 29, 2008 - 00:27 ET

What if I told you that sheriffs and prosecutors in, say, Indiana, had formed "truth squads" and "subtly" threatened prosecutions of critics of John McCain?

Does anyone think that the New York Times, Washington Post and Old Media in general wouldn't be putting the news on the front page, even with the bailout-apalooza going on in Washington?

Well, there is a "truth squad." It's in Missouri. It includes prosecutors and sheriffs. Oh, and they have formed their truth squad to threaten and intimidate the critics of ..... Barack Obama.

Here is a transcript of a report from station KMOW in St. Louis (first 1:45 of vid; HT Gateway Pundit) that may leave you wondering whatev....
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I have seen press bias up front and close, but I have never seen such mass cover up and protection of a candidate before - one clearly so toxically far left. Is it the race card? self delusion and censorship? A 'plot' with the october suprise meltdown, (something someone like Soros & a few friends could manipulate) I don't know what to think anymore.

Commie, Facist, Hippie, Evangelist..Mcain, Obama..

2008-10-10T10:52:00.000-05:00

one thing we all agree on: Bruce Ratner is a corrupt, greedy son of bitch trying to build a very very bad project with your tax dollars. You can help!::
.Walk Don't Destroy 4:
A Candlelight Walk to Shine Light on the Abuses of the Atlantic Yards Project and
Raise Funds for the Legal Fight Against the Stalled Project

For this year's Walkathon, which is wholly dependent upon your active participation and sponsor solicitation, we are doing something new. The walk will take place in the twilight hours and the walkers will carry candles to shine a light on the numerous abuses of Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan.

A preview of life under Boss man Obama

2008-10-09T10:23:00.002-05:00

Think Bush assaulted our inalienable rights? So do I. The only problem....Obama will make things worse:
Feds Investigate Sherrif After "hussien" remark.

This is not an isolated incident but part of an increasing, disturbing pattern. Critics of Obama are being legally threatened and harassed. If you're white, and to the right of Obama (not hard to do) get a gun you'll need it. Its going to get ugly, fast.

Sound like fear mongering? It is, if you're content to stick with 100 cable channels, Bud, the NFL and repeating the mantras of multiculturalism, but anyone who isn't better get be prepared.

Democracy, NeoCon style

2008-10-09T10:20:00.000-05:00

Ukraine calls snap parliament election
AFP - 51 minutes ago
KIEV (AFP) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday called early general elections after dissolving parliament when parties failed to resurrect a ruling pro-Western coalition in the former Soviet state.

No Doubt, The ADL Would Find This "Anti-Semetic".

2008-10-09T08:44:00.002-05:00

I mean, how dare we take obscure christian holidays and try to get 'equal time' with the most holy of Jewish ones. The outrage. Who would ever do such a thing? Next thing you know we'll be going to a Jewish majority country and demand equal time for all Christian holidays.

Happy Our Lady Of The Rosary/ Robert Grosseteste Day! (And Yom Kippur)

[Peter Brimelow] @ 11:39 pm [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

Yom Kippur is celebrated this year from sundown October 8 to sundown October 9. As with Rosh Hashanah, it is increasingly observed as a de facto holiday by American schools and legislatures. And, as with Rosh Hashana, we point out, in the spirit of diversity that has brought us the War Against Christmas, that it is also the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Well, actually that’s on October 7, but Chanukah isn’t always near Christmas either. This feast is particularly appropriate to VDARE.COM readers, because it celebrates the Christian victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, saving Europe from an earlier Muslim invasion. And in the Episcopalian Church Calendar, October 9 is the feast day of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln in the thirteenth century. Because of his resistance to church corruption, Italian absentee clergy and royal usurpation (he was present at the signing of the Magna Carta), plus his scientific interests, Grosseteste has been regarded as a precursor of the Protestant Enlightenment to which Virginia Dare, and America, are heirs.

You can really get into this upstaging game! VDARE.COM wishes a happy Day to everyon

A Preview of LIfe Under Boss Obama

2008-10-07T15:57:00.004-05:00

Kenya deports anti-Obama author

Kenya deports anti-Obama author
Jerome Corsi, author of "Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," tried to launch his new book, but violated immigration rules, Kenyan officials say.
By Rob Crilly | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 8, 2008 edition

Nairobi, Kenya - The neoconservative author of an anti-Barack Obama book was detained and ordered out of Kenya on Tuesday night for not having a proper work permit, said Kenyan officials.

Jerome Corsi, who wrote "Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," had planned to launch his far-right tract in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Tuesday.

However, immigration officials intercepted him as he arrived at a luxury hotel where the launch event was due to take place.

This is the second time Dr. Corsi has been involved in an effort to question the credentials of the Democratic presidential candidate. The episode also underscores the depth of support for Senator Obama in Kenya.

His book has angered many ordinary Kenyans who view Obama – the son of a Kenyan goat herder who grew up to become a government economist – as a hero.

It questions Obama's fitness to hold office, rakes over his family history, and explores alleged links with the Kenyan prime minister, Raila Odinga.

"We are going to leave for London tonight," said Corsi's assistant, Tim Bueler, on Tuesday afternoon.

"Our passports and visas are in order but it seems the Kenyan authorities have lost our arrival cards, which we filled in on the plane coming here," he said. "So we will leave while they complete their investigations, but have been told we can return."

As well as launching his book, Corsi planned to visit Obama's half-brother George, who was recently found to be living in squalid conditions in a Nairobi slum.

Corsi, who wrote "Unfit for Command" in 2004 as part of an attempt to malign John Kerry's Vietnam record, said he had a check for $1,000 to give to George.

The writer has been in Kenya since last Thursday.

But it seems the Kenyan authorities woke up to his presence on Tuesday morning when local newspapers advertised the book launch.

The Standard, a Kenyan newspaper, quoted a press release saying: "Dr. Corsi will also expose details of deep secret ties between US presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama and a section of Kenya government leaders, their connection to certain sectoral groups in Kenya and subsequent plot to be executed in Kenya should Sen Obama win the American presidency."

Obama has ancestral roots in the Luo tribe of Western Kenya, as does Mr. Odinga.

Raila narrowly lost December's presidential election which was marred by widespread vote rigging. His defeat prompted widespread violence which left some 1,500 dead. It ended only with a power-sharing deal that promoted Odinga to the new position of prime minister.

Obama is deeply popular in Kenya, where he is seen as a political hero, untainted by the corruption and sleaze that dog homegrown politicians here.[oh yeah it doesn't have anything to do with national origin from another article:
The absolute support that Kenyans offer Obama comes from the fact that his father was Kenyan, which, according to our tradition, makes him our own. In most of our tribal cultures, a child belongs to the father. This overshadows the fact that his mother was a white American."
hey, isn't that 'racist'?]

He has attracted broad support that overcomes traditional tribal divisions[umm no more of the 'saint obama as savior' cult from the press...if Obama is elected, tribal divisions will be overcome in Kenya, in America, racism will end, it will prove a black can do anything and so on...what I see coming? a wreck of an attempt at the utopian society that will backfire- when the starry eyed liberals who support Obama find that not everyone wants to sing kum-ba-ya with them, they will make us sing, damn it, and then it will get ugly and messy...and I suspect, a lot white guys are going to have a lot of fixing to do...that is, if, at this point our society and/or country are even worht 'fixing' ].

Corsi's book alleges that Obama was raised as a Muslim, a false rumor.

A Christian who attended the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Obama's campaign has dissected the book on their website FightTheSmears.com.

Challenge: Read With A Straight Face

2008-10-07T12:00:00.006-05:00

i know it must have been difficult to write it with one....

Wall Street Ends McCain’s Lucky Streak

Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, specializes in polling of electoral battleground states, including Ohio and Florida. Click here for Mr. Brown’s full bio.

The Republican presidential nominee had lived a charmed life during this election year.

At every stage in the campaign, when the fickle finger of fate had to point one way or another, it turned inJohn McCain’s direction.

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Let's seem McCain (R, Media) has been the darling of the media and only the media, while Ron Paul was literally kept out of debates, when he won poles the pole was not published, when he ranked 3rd, his name would be kept off television screens and the 5th and 6th candidates - usually media favorites - shown. examples:

The following is a cumulative count of all votes since the Iowa Straw Poll:

Ron Paul 30% 772
Mitt Romney 23% 581
Fred Thompson 18% 470
Rudy Giuliani 10% 266
Sam Brownback 7% 168
Mike Huckabey 5% 127
John McCain 4% 110
Duncan Hunter 1% 34
Tommy Tancredo 1% 15
Other 1% 24

Total 100.00% 2567

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In New Hampshire, people voted for McCain because...they thought he was tough on immigration. Stupidity of voters aside, where would they get this impression, if McCain's campaign spread the lie, why didn't mass media mention that, oh he had a little to do with amnesty.

The point - McCain is as much a media creation as Obama - and he has discovered, to his chagrin that he's no longer as useful to the people cutting checks for our 'journalists' and has been left to flounder. Good riddance. Obama will be worse, for whites, and, oh anyone who appreciates the constitution but McCain is at least getting what he deserves. Both are simply driving us off the abyss, just choosing different routes.

side note the quip about McCain's home state being the 'media' is shamelessly lifted from Nicholas Stix

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Seems I am not the only one who's noticed:
.

Media Turns On McCain

[James Fulford] @ 1:20 pm [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

In New York Magazine, John Heilemann has a piece on the MSM turning on McCain:

I have sat across from Chris Matthews enough times now, participating in that psychotropic ritual known as Hardball, that I thought I’d heard it all—but then the other night he uncorked a doozy that actually rendered me speechless. (No, that is not a misprint.) “Let’s start with John McCain,” he said to me on the air shortly after the first presidential debate between McCain and Barack Obama. “Do you think he was too troll-like tonight? You know, too much of a troll?” I laughed. “Seriously,” Chris went on. “Do people really want to put up with four years of that? Of [him] sitting there, angrily, grumpily, like a codger?”
As both a media figure and a human being, Matthews is sui generis—and yet what made his comments so remarkable was how unremarkable they were. In the past several weeks, the shift of press-corps sentiment against McCain has been stark and undeniable, even among heavies such as Matthews long accused by the left of being residents of the Arizonan’s amen corner. Jonathan Alter, Joe Klein, Richard Cohen, David Ignatius, Jacob Weisberg: all former McCain admirers now turned brutal critics. Equally if not more damaging, the shift has been just as pronounced, if less operatic, among straight-news reporters. Suddenly, McCain is no longer being portrayed as a straight-talking, truth-telling maverick but as a liar, a fraud, and an opportunist with acute anger-management issues.[How John McCain Went From Maverick to Crank, October 5, 2008]

Of course, he was always like that, but they didn’t feel like pointing it out as long as he was a “maverick”–a loose cannon aimed at the Republican Party.

But as Mickey Kaus points out, none of those people were ever actually McCain supporters–they’re Democrats. Once McCain became the Republican nominee, opposed to Obama, the “promised prince” then McCain’s days as a media idol were over.

When Does The REAL Bubble Burst?

2008-10-07T09:43:00.003-05:00

Proposition Nation, open borders, nation-less "unions"... the idea that America, or France, or Europe are 'creed' nations...the idea that England is not for English but for all peoples.

No one but the west is mad enough to adapt just 'theories' - In fact areas like South Asia have been steadily fragmenting along ethnic lines.

In times of crisis, broken, fragmented "societies" will only fracture further. Do we honestly think that the massive numbers of Chinese coming to America, for example are here to 'help us' or will ever worry about whether they have a 'diverse' enough work force? In times of chaos, like the LA riots, does one imagine they were doing anything but looking out for their own.

Of course, one will say there were exceptions but they were just that, exceptions. I suspect, now that the gates of hell seem to be opening rather wide, that we will be 'forced' to drop multicultural 'ideals' (not that i ever think they were).

Yet Ratner's Project Is Still Going Through?

2008-10-07T09:34:00.000-05:00

Russia and Brazil crumble as commodity prices crash

The entire complex of commodities and emerging market stocks, bonds, and currencies is now in free-fall as the economic crisis spreads like brushfire, threatening to draw every corner of the globe into the vortex of recession.

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I wonder, in a few weeks, when New York goes to Washington looking for a loan, if Ratner's project will STILL be backed by the state and city?

One Tires of Making References To...

2008-10-07T08:58:00.003-05:00

The French Aristocracy on the eve of the Revolution, but::

Economic Downturn Isn’t Slowing Luxury Box Sales

The NY Times
By Katie Thomas and Richard Sandomir

With the economy in crisis and Wall Street in turmoil, will local sports teams be forced to place vacancy signs on the scores of luxury suites being built in their new stadiums?
Don’t expect a stampede for the bleachers just yet, several team executives and industry observers said recently. They noted that the concentration of corporate headquarters in New York — combined with the marquee appeal of locations like Yankee Stadium — meant that demand for luxury suites was not likely to fade anytime soon. At some of the new stadiums, the suites are already sold out.

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Being a fan of Edmund Burke, means, of course I am no fan of the French Revolution, but if the NYT is not lying or just taking the Sports Teams words on face value (a stretch, I know) then corporations are utterly out of touch, or oblivious to the deep, growing anger among 'the people'. In midst of a tax payer funded bailout they are boozing it up in tax deductible, taxpayer bond financed luxury sky boxes?

Yeah, Just What We Need.

2008-10-07T08:40:00.002-05:00

Amidst the chaos of the current 'meltdown' no one has stopped to notice the 'rules', or in the case of the Federal government, the constitution, are being tossed aside because its an 'emergency'. Curiously, the press, which has been complacent leading up to this 'crisis' gives the impression it happened overnight, and came out of 'nowhere' rather than actually point the finger at the people who caused it- the very people asking for more money and more power.

Locally, that is the case with Mike Bloomberg. The press and so called elite are enthusiastically endorsing altering the 'rules' so Bloomberg, and others in power, can remain in power. We need Bloomberg, they tell us, in times of financial crisis.

Yet what has Bloomberg done with his tenure? He has aggresively pursued eminent domain projects that have turned over huge chunks of land to large corporations and real estate developers. He has 'de-diversified' the economy - destroying many small and mid sized businesses and turning the land over -and often using the tax revenues from the middle class and small businesses - to fund megaprojects- often real estate development.

Does anyone, in hindsight, think this is a good idea? Bloomberg understands money, the power elite, & wall street, he understands or cares nothing for, manufacturing, shipping, skilled labor, research and development or any other more stable, long term industries.

So, unless you're a real estate developer or connected friend why in hell would you want Bloomberg for a fourth term? The only think I can imagine is fear of another Dinkins.

The Beginging of the End.....

2008-10-03T15:31:00.004-05:00

of our republic. Melodramatic? I wish. An unelected, unaccountable financial elite just seized an enormous amount of power; enough power to effectively control the country, and Congress, in direct defiance of voter will, and needless to say, The Constitution, acquiesced. Today is the beginning of the 'final act' of the Republic founded by my ancestors. How long will it take? 1, 10, 20 years? Who knows. East Germany fell faster than expected, Cuba has lasted longer than expected.

link

Reversal of fortune: House approves $700-billion bailout bill

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Traders pause to watch the House vote on television on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange today in New York City. The U.S. House of Representatives approved a $700-billion bailout of the U.S. financial system.

Dear Mr. Buffett: I Will Sell You My Share Of The Bailout

2008-10-03T14:23:00.002-05:00

Steve Sailer writes:

Dear Mr. Buffett: I Will Sell You My Share Of The Bailout

[Steve Sailer] @ 1:58 pm [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

In the LA Times today, Warren Buffett endorsed the bailout plan as “a rescue plan for America.” He went on to say:

“If we could do the deal that is available to the United States government and have its staying power, and its borrowing costs, we would make significant money. I would love to have, if they buy the assets at market price, I would love to have 1% of the profit or loss that results from buying these assets from troubled financial institutions.”

Okay, well, that suggests a second deal:

I hereby offer to sell, straight up, my family’s share of the bailout, both payouts and subsequent profits, to Mr. Warren Buffett. If he’ll write me a check for what it will cost me in taxes, I’ll sign over to him my share of the profits, if any.

Seriously, if Buffett really “would love to have 1% of the profit or loss that results from buying these assets from troubled financial institutions,” then I am all in favor of him ponying up $7 billion for 1% of the action.

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I am amazed how many middle class americans are falling for this ruse - the financial elite of this country have been screwing us over for 20+ years - callously telling factory workers to get used to the global economy, now they assure us they have our best interests at heart, and we should turn over a large portion of our taxes and superseed the constitution? No wonder they want to ban guns.

..and Atlantic Yards is STILL on the Table?

2008-10-03T11:50:00.004-05:00

New York State Deficit Grows, Special Session Planned (Update1)

By Michael Quint and Henry Goldman

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- New York Governor David Paterson and legislative leaders agreed at a meeting in New York City today to cut state spending to deal with a $1.2 billion gap in this year's budget as the Wall Street slump spreads through the economy

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cuts in education, cuts in transportation, but not a drop trimmed from the hand outs to a greedy, corrupt, billionaire developer who plans to build an unneeded stadium and , at least he claims, 16 skyscapers containing luxury condos and office space.

Extraordinary...

It looks, rather bad now, doesn't it? that Boss Ratner is still getting his pork? Still, from what i understand, the private sector can't support his folly - government goes where wiser heads fear to tread...I guess its a bit easier to 'tread' with taxpayer dollars.

Oops

2008-10-01T10:23:00.001-05:00

Search it thoroughly, and you’ll find nothing in the U.S. Constitution that authorizes the Federal Government to create an institution like the Federal Reserve, let alone to encourage home lending. Yet, no one seems much to care.

In fact, the question is rather an uncomfortable one. Ron Paul recently asked Ben Bernanke where he got constitutional authority to create money out of thin air, and Bernanke said that Congress had delegated to the Fed Congress’s constitutional power to coin money.

But of course, the Fed doesn’t coin money—it prints paper. And the Constitution doesn’t empower Congress to delegate its powers. (But that’s another battle that supporters of the Constitution lost long ago.)

link

Which handles money better? A casino or Wall Street?

2008-10-01T09:45:00.000-05:00

Bad Money' by Kevin Phillips
Which handles money better? A casino or Wall Street? A look at the reckless financing and political decision-making preceding the current economic crisis.

Kevin Phillips' new book, "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism," would be sobering enough if it were the first we'd ever heard from him. When you take into account how often he's been right in the past, this 14th volume in his continuing commentary on the American condition becomes positively alarming.

As a senior strategist for Richard Nixon in 1968, Phillips correctly forecast the coming conservative realignment that ultimately would propel Ronald Reagan into the White House. As a principal architect of the Republicans' "Southern strategy," he correctly foresaw a shift of influence to the "Sunbelt" and to the "new right" -- two phrases he coined. He also envisioned what we call the red state-blue state divide and accurately predicted its geography. Twenty-five years ago, the Wall Street Journal heralded Phillips as "the leading conservative electoral analyst," but since then, he's become disenchanted with the GOP's embrace of evangelical pieties and what he calls dynastic politics and "market triumphalism." Still, he hasn't crossed the aisle and, in "Bad Money," he has a great deal to say about the Democrats' -- particularly the Clinton Democrats' -- complicity in the developing global economic crisis.

....................................................................
take away quote Banking is not the creator of our prosperity but is the creation of it. It is not the cause of our wealth, but it is the consequence of our wealth."

Told You I Was A Conspriacy Theorist...

2008-09-30T15:06:00.001-05:00

link

Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?

(updated below - Update II)

Several bloggers today have pointed to this obviously disturbing article from Army Times, which announces that "beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the [1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North" -- "the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities." The article details:

They'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .

k

...........................................
Can't happen here.

Either Ratner has more power than even my conspriacy theories allude to....

2008-09-30T14:49:00.003-05:00

or he's just plain nuts no land grab writes::

Déjà delay all over again, redux

The stories about more Atlantic Yards delays just keep on comin'.

Gothamist, Atlantic Yards Project Further Delayed By State Court

In light of yesterday's ruling, Ratner says the groundbreaking "may" be delayed another six months. The developer is also waiting for the IRS to rule on whether he can use tax exempt bonds to pay for the $1 billion arena, which he intends to build first. He's also struggling to line up financing for the rest of the $4 billion project, doesn't have an anchor tenant for the office tower, and city officials have not shown much enthusiasm about his recent request for $100 million more in taxpayer subsidies.

Curbed, Atlantic Yards 'Will Go Forward'

Bruce Ratner declares "let me be clear," yadda, yadda, "will go forward," yadda, yadda, "all the more important," yadda, yadda, "committed as ever," yadda, yadda, "ensure that it goes forward," yadda, yadda.

.

....................................................

Ratner, do you read the same papers I do? are you in a fantasy world? You realize that NY is already overbuilt (good luck even hustling off your overprice luxury rentals on dekalb) the market's going to be over built for years, and we're in the worst financial crisis since the 1930s...and you want to built an lavish Arena with luxury skyboxes surrounded by office towers? You know the financial industry - one of NY's most important employers - is in a 'bit' of a downturn, dont' you?

"Burning Down the House" Great Video Of Bush and Mortage Crisis

2008-09-30T10:16:00.005-05:00

great with paleo conservative commentary ....... Bush wanted to give mortgages to "Deserving families who have bad credit histories"!

Speaking of Bailouts..

2008-09-29T14:33:00.001-05:00

Anyone know how much the state and city have spent 'bailing out' Metrotech and Atlantic Mall. What is the potential cost to the state if Ratner's project fails?

Ratner Suffers Setback, the Conspiracy Theory Version.

2008-09-29T14:28:00.006-05:00

from dddb:
Court Ruling is Major Setback for Ratner's Atlantic Yards

For Immediate Release: September 29, 2008

Court Rejects New York State's Effort to Dismiss Atlantic Yards Eminent Domain Case

Ruling is a Major Setback for Bruce Ratner's
Proposed Project and the
Empire State Development Corporation

Property Owners and Tenants
Will Get Their Day in Court Next Year
..............................................................

My conspiracy theory: NY Judges are corrupt, political appointees. Ratner's project is financially infeasible for the state, but no politician wants to break a backroom deal with Boss Ratner, so this is an easy way out.

The evidence: just a hunch, but according to AYR:

The decision denying the ESDC's motion to dismiss, apparently on procedural grounds,

When have Judges every been a stickler for 'the rules' when it came to Forest City Ratner?

Andrew Jackson On Banking....

2008-09-25T08:58:00.000-05:00

"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves, I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out! If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system there would be a revolution before morning." -- Andrew Jackson

.....................................

His statement referred to the US chartered bank, but could very well apply to the Fed today.

Spain Prefers Islam over Roman Catholicism

2008-09-25T08:37:00.002-05:00

Spain Prefers Islam over Roman Catholicism

From the desk of Soeren Kern on Mon, 2008-09-22 21:20

Barcelona’s main annual festival, the Festes de La Mercè, kicks into high gear on September 24, the day of the city’s patron saint, the Virgen de la Merced. Because the holiday falls on a Wednesday this year, the celebrations will be spread out over more than one week. In all, some 600 cultural events have been scheduled from September 19 to September 28. But not a single one of them will make any explicit reference to the religious origin of the event.

The title “Virgen de la Merced” (Mary of mercy) has its origins in the founding of the Orden de la Merced, a Roman Catholic religious order, in Barcelona in 1218. At the time, the Iberian Peninsula was under Islamic occupation (711-1492) and the so-called mercedarios (knights of mercy) established the new order with the express purpose of liberating Catholic believers who were being held as prisoners by Muslim captors. (The group is believed to have “redeemed” between 60,000 and 80,000 Catholic prisoners.)

Fast-forward some eight centuries to September 2008. Multiculturalism has (temporarily) replaced Islam as the dominant religion in Spain. And multiculturalism’s core doctrine of political correctness says it is now forbidden to honor the memory of faithful Roman Catholics who languished under Muslim captivity.

Instead, the Islamic community of Barcelona has been officially invited to hold its very own festivities as part of the La Mercè festival for the first time ever. Nits de Ramadà (Nights of Ramadan) aims to allow Muslims to party with friends and family during the evening hours when Muslims stop fasting for Ramadan. Nits de Ramadà is open to non-Muslims, provided they dress properly, do not have more than four wives, and do not smuggle alcoholic beverages into the fairgrounds.

At the same time, an anti-clerical group called Lliga per la Laïcitat (Secularism League), which receives a 30.000 euro subsidy to “advise” the regional Catalan government on the separation of church and state, has sent a letter to every municipal councilor in Barcelona warning them not to participate “in the religious celebration that takes place during the festival.” The “religious celebration” refers not to Nits de Ramadà, but rather to a Catholic mass that is scheduled for September 24.

The letter says that justifying attendance of the mass “on the basis of an institutional commitment or a tradition contradicts the imperative necessity to understand that individual religious conscience – which in this case it is – should never take priority in determining the decisions arising from the office an elected representative is temporarily exercising.”

Just in case that was not sufficiently clear, the letter closes by saying: “Democratically elected representatives must exercise their civic role separate from their membership of one or other belief system. In the most friendly and respectful manner possible, we must remind you that you are also representatives of the City of Barcelona.”

In the post-modern linguistics of Spanish Socialism, the letter is saying that any elected official in Barcelona should think twice about his or her job security before attending the Catholic mass that is being held in memory of the city’s patron saint. By contrast, attending Nits de Ramada is not only encouraged, but essential to career enhancement.

If the gatekeepers of Spanish multiculturalism do not see any irony in the Islam versus Catholicism debate in Barcelona, then neither does Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero see any irony in his recent trip to Turkey.

Zapatero, addressing some 2.500 guests at a Ramadan fast-breaking iftar meal in Istanbul on September 15, declared that Spain is a country “proud of the influence of Islam in its history.” He went on to say: “We want to pay respect to all religions; we want to be tolerant of all faiths and ideologies. We will demolish all walls that are barriers to understanding each other.”

Just moments earlier, Zapatero’s host, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist prime minister of Turkey, said: “We expect members of other civilizations to declare Islamophobia a crime against humanity.” This is the same Erdogan who once said of Islam: “Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.”

The irony of Zapatero’s trip to Turkey even caught the attention of Spain’s famously sycophantic leftwing media establishment.

The pro-Socialist El País said the attendance of Zapatero (whom the newspaper describes as a “flagman of secularity”) at a dinner arranged by Turkey’s Islamist AKP party, which in July narrowly escaped closure on charges of being a “focal point for anti-secular activities” by the Constitutional Court by only one vote, constituted a “paradox.”

Barcelona’s left-leaning La Vanguardia ran an editorial titled “The double laicism of Zapatero” which noted that “Zapatero is hyper secular in Spain but a little less so in Turkey […] In Istanbul Zapatero practiced the ‘positive secularism’ advocated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with the support of Pope Benedict XVI, that is, accepting that religion has its place in public space. Positivism with Islam, however, contrasts with the little sympathy that Zapatero has for the Catholic Church. Will Zapatero have lunch with the bishops on Easter Sunday?”

The center-right ABC, in an editorial titled “With Islam there is no Secularism” said: “Zapatero has not had any difficulties in attending an event of such an obviously religious nature organized by a religious Islamic party. However, his lack of enthusiasm when it comes to the Catholic religion is well known, sometimes with absences as unjustifiable as when he failed to attend the mass of Benedict XVI in Valencia [in July 2006]. It is clear that the PSOE [Spanish Socialist Party] uses a double yardstick: respect and intimacy towards Islam versus aggressive secularism vis-à-vis the Catholic Church. All this with no justification except for political opportunism.”

Many observers are noting that as the Spanish economy descends further and further into chaos, Zapatero’s rhetoric on religious and moral issues is becoming increasingly more radical. In addition to his enthusiastic embrace of all things Islamic, Zapatero is also pushing a range of social political initiatives that, among other things, include easing of restrictions on abortion, euthanasia, divorce and the adoption of children by homosexual couples.

One question is how far Zapatero can push his anything-goes policies before the Muslim community in Spain rises up in rebellion and demands the recognition of Islamic sharia law along side the Spanish Civil Code, similar to what has happened in the United Kingdom.

In any case, Spain is clearly in the middle of a fierce culture war. Although it looks like the post-modern politically correct multicultural secularists led by Zapatero currently have the upper hand, Islam could end up being the long-term winner.

In the words of Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The Spaniards and the Moors–Past and Present

2008-09-25T08:28:00.002-05:00

The Spaniards and the Moors–Past and Present

[Henry McCulloch] @ 10:40 pm [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

Looking at my trusty copy of Father Lasance’s New Roman Missal (which, name notwithstanding, is a missal for the traditional Latin Mass), I noticed that in the Catholic Church’s traditional calendar, today is the feast of Our Lady of Ransom. Here is what the Missal has to say:

SEPT 24. Our Lady of Ransom: The Order of Our Lady of Ransom was founded in the Thirteenth Century by St. Peter Nolasco and St. Raymond of Pennafort, aided by King James of Aragon. The object of the Order was to redeem Christians held in slavery by the Mohammedans. Pope Gregory IX instituted the feast of Our Lady of Ransom and afterwards it was extended by Pope Innocent XII to the Universal Church .

Soeren Kern, writing from Spain for The Brussels Journal, reports that Our Lady of Ransom ( Virgen de la Merced to Spaniards) is Barcelona ’s patron saint. Accordingly, her feast will be celebrated in Barcelona , and on a large scale. Kern says “some 600 cultural events have been scheduled from September 19 to September 28.” But he also notes that, in keeping with Socialist Spain’s unenviable position in the vanguard of today’s anti-Christian Europe , “not a single one of them will make any explicit reference to the religious origin of the event.”

Indeed, times have changed. Far from being the Catholic Spaniards who, in a Reconquista taking almost 800 years, won their country back from the Moorish invaders who had despoiled and inflicted Islam on it, today’s Spaniards (Catalans, here) are doing everything they can to grovel to the Mohammedans they have so unwisely allowed to enter Spain again. Kern reports that not only have celebrations of Islam been inserted into this Christian feast that once celebrated liberation from Islamic slavery, Spanish officials are warned not to practice their Christian faith, if so inclined, but to be sure to affirm Islam:

“Fast-forward some eight centuries to September 2008. Multiculturalism has (temporarily) replaced Islam as the dominant religion in Spain . And multiculturalism’s core doctrine of political correctness says it is now forbidden to honor the memory of faithful Roman Catholics who languished under Muslim captivity.
Instead, the Islamic community of Barcelona has been officially invited to hold its very own festivities as part of the La Mercè festival for the first time ever. Nits de Ramadà (Nights of Ramadan) aims to allow Muslims to party with friends and family during the evening hours when Muslims stop fasting for Ramadan. Nits de Ramadà is open to non-Muslims, provided they dress properly, do not have more than four wives, and do not smuggle alcoholic beverages into the fairgrounds.
At the same time, an anti-clerical group called Lliga per la Laïcitat (Secularism League), which receives a 30.000 euro subsidy to “advise” the regional Catalan government on the separation of church and state, has sent a letter to every municipal councilor in Barcelona warning them not to participate “in the religious celebration that takes place during the festival.” The “religious celebration” refers not to Nits de Ramadà, but rather to a Catholic mass that is scheduled for September 24.
The letter says that justifying attendance of the mass “on the basis of an institutional commitment or a tradition contradicts the imperative necessity to understand that individual religious conscience – which in this case it is – should never take priority in determining the decisions arising from the office an elected representative is temporarily exercising.”
Just in case that was not sufficiently clear, the letter closes by saying: “Democratically elected representatives must exercise their civic role separate from their membership of one or other belief system. In the most friendly and respectful manner possible, we must remind you that you are also representatives of the City of Barcelona .”
In the post-modern linguistics of Spanish Socialism, the letter is saying that any elected official in Barcelona should think twice about his or her job security before attending the Catholic mass that is being held in memory of the city’s patron saint. By contrast, attending Nits de Ramada is not only encouraged, but essential to career enhancement.”

note: I visited Spain this year and was shocked to see that the old Arab quarter in Granada is not "Arab" in name only - it literally looked like Fez. On the way out of Spain, I got my penknife (no more than an inch) seized by customs. 100,000 North African Muslims literally at the feet of the crypt of Queen Isabel, and they are seizing pen knives from Anglo-Saxons.

And Speaking Of Land Grabs::

2008-09-25T08:24:00.001-05:00

in response to this:

The Mother of All Management Buyouts

Martin Kelly writes from Scotland:

You're dead right to describe the bailout as a coup - in fact, it's worse than that; to all intents and purposes it's a management buyout of the American financial and political systems.

And done with Other People's Money!

I've been blogging about this since last Tuesday (to anyone who's willing to listen) - there is absolutely no normative difference between the proposed operation of Paulson's bailout and Gaetano Salvemini's description of Mussolini's economic theory as being that 'profit is private and personal, loss is public and social'.

a highly knowledge friend in the industry writes:

It is a land grab. Imho, .......as currently proposed will result in hundred of bank failures. GS [Goldman Sachs] and MS [Morgan Stanley] just became bhc why? To buy insolvent banks on the cheap..

I spend a lot of time studying things other than economics

2008-09-24T15:28:00.002-05:00

Reading history, studying art...how come I could see this meltdown coming a mile away (and thus stayed out of the housing market) but none of these 'geniuses' could? I can only think that they knew they were participating in a scam.

Now, all across mainstream media, 'experts' are feigning shock and awe - as if **poof** this 'crisis' appeared overnight.

Michele Malkin, making sense:

2008-09-24T15:22:00.001-05:00

Kill the bailout: The Big Lies

By Michelle Malkin • September 24, 2008 12:19 PM

The Biggest Lie of the bailout pimps is this: Give us $700 billion of your money and we promise we’ll give it back someday.

The Second Biggest Lie of the bailout pimps is this: Give us $700 billion of your money and not only do we promise we’ll give it back to you, but you’ll actually make money back off your “investment.” Later. Someday. Really.

HAAAAHHHH! Did you feel a tremor? That was me, laughing my you-know-what off. I think it registered 7.0 on the LMAO Richter Scale.

They banned short selling

2008-09-24T15:19:00.000-05:00

They banned short selling

They threw a trillion dollars at the problem

They bailed out AIG

They backed up money markets

They put out happy talk

And none of it worked

Getting spooked?

Wall Street, Neocons, Liberals, Economic Theorists, ..

2008-09-24T14:29:00.001-05:00

in short, our elite, have utterly utterly failed and have shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt that their pet theories about globalization, economics and foreign policy are massive failures...is it perhaps time for someone else to take the helm?

Unlike, say, the so called wasp elite that willing divested themselves during the 1960s 'revolution' the current elite, I suspect, aren't going to go so nicely or quietly....

Decline and Fall

2008-09-24T13:34:00.001-05:00

Decline and Fall

It's the autumn of our old republic

As I read the latest headlines reporting the ongoing implosion of the domestic economy and the ominous signs of a pending explosion in the international sphere, I watch a leaf fall from a very great height. The redwoods out here are like the pillars of a temple built by Titans, and a leaf caught in a distant branch has a long way to fall. I mistake it for a golden butterfly at first, but as it wafts downward, and my tired old eyes come into focus, I see it is a leaf. It's Indian summer out here in California wine country, the best time of year, and it's easy to turn away from the news of a collapsing civilization – because what's really collapsing is my retaining wall, and that ain't good!

Great Post From Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn

2008-09-24T13:03:00.002-05:00

" a game of pretend in desperate need of some realism by our political leaders."

Someone is taking note, we're confident, that Ratner wants federally tax-exempt bonds for his privately owned arena, which would be a net loss for New York City, while the federal government is on the verge of spending something like $700 billion in taxpayer money to bailout Ratner's fellow fat cats. Tax exemptions for no return, but rather a loss? Are you kidding?

...........................................................................
I suspect Ratner wants to get a hold of other people's land the same reason Wall Street firms want to get a hold of OPM, because he can.

I suspect Ratner will sit on it, perhaps make a huge parking lot (which should be profitable since he pays none of the costs) for a decade or so until the market picks up again -and then build, well, whatever - a huge failed megaproject like Atlantic Mall or Metrotech, which in turn the city will bail out by moving offices there (no doubt from another failed Ratner project)

Ratner mastered 'too big to fail' long before Wall Street.

My daily "WTF" thought about this bailout "crisis'

2008-09-24T12:46:00.000-05:00

Some lawmakers have proposed putting caps on executive salaries as part of the bailout. Wall Street snapped back that executives might lose incentive to perform well if this was the case. The old 'free market' whine again...this time applying it to government bailout without a hint of irony. Yes, those pay incentives really motivated them to make sound, sober judgments that would lead to profitability, didn't it?

Wall Street has long been a fan of outsourcing 'the world is flat' globalism and other main street wrecking theories, so turnabout is fair play.

Anyone remotely familiar with the Indian educational system knows, as screwed up as it is in many ways, the entrance examinations to the top universities are rigorous, to the point where most American post graduate students would miserably fail a freshman entrance exam. In other words, there's lots of smart people among that one billion, and as any out of work American programmer knows they'll work hard for less. So I am sure we can find some bright Indian MBA graduates to sort out our financial mess, and I am certain that many of them will have better ethical standards than Paulson & Co. - not that that's hard to do. I am sure they would be quite happy with say, 250,000.00 dollars- well, Euros, a year for the trouble as opposed to $250,000,000.00 for screwing up, and hey maybe one of them could hook me up with Priyanka Chopra:

Although they sometimes can display mind-numbing, comical arrogance, in my experience Indians are generally polite, well mannered (almost an old school Britisness about them) reserved, and often ethical to the point of impracticality. What a refreshing change that would be.

Steve Sailer On the "Rescue" of Wall Street

2008-09-24T12:33:00.000-05:00

The Mother of All Management Buyouts

Martin Kelly writes from Scotland:

You're dead right to describe the bailout as a coup - in fact, it's worse than that; to all intents and purposes it's a management buyout of the American financial and political systems.

And done with Other People's Money!

I've been blogging about this since last Tuesday (to anyone who's willing to listen) - there is absolutely no normative difference between the proposed operation of Paulson's bailout and Gaetano Salvemini's description of Mussolini's economic theory as being that 'profit is private and personal, loss is public and social'.

Has Anyone Noticed...

2008-09-24T12:32:00.003-05:00

That with all of this talk of bailout there hasn't been any talk of culpability? It would be truly extraordinary if no one was prosecuted. Then again, I remember two little tidbits from my brief days lugging ledgerbooks at an investment house:

a. John Gutfreund (or however you spell it) 's clerk was immediately fired after the early 90's Solomon Brothers scandal... but Gutfreund walked away with a 10 million or so bonus.

b. Michael Milikin's Sales assistant spent more time in jail than he did.

In other words, what I imagine will happen is that some low level manager or trader will be prosecuted and the big guys will walk away with fat checks, courtesy of the taxpayer.

From Ron Paul

2008-09-24T12:02:00.002-05:00

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress' throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It's bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters."

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we're being told it's unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there's this: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don't make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we're supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they're not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Where the WASPs Aren’t

2008-09-24T10:43:00.006-05:00

Great Article From Austin Bromwell about the 'unreality' of Media- that the new elite (jewish) still props up the old, faded elite (Anglo) as the 'establishment'
as an object of contempt and hate. Could we imagine, for a moment, replacing all the WASP names with Jewish ones? Could we imagine the outrage?

Its amazing, but many people still believe these conventions because of MSM...then again they also believe Israel has done no wrong and Sadamm had weapons of Mass Destruction.
...........................................................................
Zeitgeist
Where the WASPs Aren’t
Posted by Austin Bramwell on September 23, 2008

Gossip Girl

The TV show Gossip Girl, now in its second season, chronicles the
“scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite"—"elite" meaning private school kids and their families. Replete with iphone-toting teenagers, haute couture and on-location filming, the show pretends to at least a surface verisimilitude. When it comes to underlying sociological realities, however, it offers nothing but the most fatuous distortions.

For example:

• In Gossip Girl, the obligatory fish-out-of-water character lives in a capacious Williamsburg loft with sliding industrial doors and exposed brick. From this, we’re supposed to infer that his family not only has less money but that they’re more authentic and less status-driven that the denizens of the Upper East Side. In reality, many New Yorkers would cut out their own eyeballs to get a big Williamsburg loft. Here are some of the prices. Further, as status symbol, a Williamsburg loft arguably trumps a Park Avenue co-op. Williamsburg is where the cool white people live; only sell-outs live on the Upper East Side.

• In Gossip Girl, kids get into elite colleges by not-so-deftly signaling their membership in the good old boys network. One applicant even says to an interviewer, “Why should I get into Dartmouth? Because I’m a [impressive family name].” In reality, name-dropping in an interview is probably the one thing (other than telling a racist joke) an applicant could do to ensure that he doesn’t get admitted. Further, as colleges like to trumpet the “diversity” of their student body, an Hindu or an Eskimo has a better chance into college than a preppy with an ancient pedigree. Finally, colleges compete for do-gooders with exceptional brains. The world of Gossip Girl, where slackers and nincompoops get in through family connections, simply doesn’t exist.

• In Gossip Girl, rich kids all have names like Waldorf, Archibald, Bass and van der Woodsen. (In keeping with media’s loathing of the Texas Bass family, the villain is named “Chuck Bass.") In reality, however, the families of the old Protestant Establishment make up only a minority of New York’s wealthy elite. They haven’t entirely disappeared; they still host their debutantes balls, the Forbes family still keeps the Social Register afloat, and a handful of institutions (mostly hidden from public view) are still controlled by WASPs. Some WASPs even have substantial fortunes. (Those fortunes, however, are rarely very old; no Knickerbocker family like “van der Woodsen” can afford New York’s social whirl.) But WASPs as a whole just don’t have the numbers, much less the will, to dominate New York society. As Louis Auchincloss gently puts it, they have “lost their monopoly.”

Instead, perhaps a plurality of the rich private school kids in Manhattan—even at historically Protestant schools—are Jewish. The Jewish Daily Forward goes so far as to report that Trinity and Dalton, two of the top private schools in New York, are “largely Jewish.” An entire media industry follows the lavish bar mitzvahs of Manhattan private school kids. The closest real-world model for the high school in Gossip Girl, The Dalton School, has historically been the most recherché school for Jewish New Yorkers. (Most WASPs prefer to send their children to the old single-sex grammar schools.) Tellingly, the media now treat Dalton as the most posh school in Manhattan.

In Gossip Girl, however, Jewish kids don’t even exist, much less predominate. Everything about Gossip Girl is modern, from the drugs to the iphones, except for the sociological background, which the writers may as well have lifted out of the Gilded Age.

• It almost goes without saying that Gossip Girls gets nothing right about WASPs. WASPs don’t flaunt their wealth; on the contrary, they cultivate their shabbiness, the better to signal to the world that they don’t need money (which they probably don’t have anyway) in order to rank socially. To demonstrate your WASP bona fides, you drive a 1980s Buick station wagon, not a Rolls Royce.

In fairness, in mischaracterizing America’s upper class, Gossip Girl is merely following pop culture convention. Virtually every Hollywood movie and TV show, from Scent of a Woman to Family Guy, assumes that a WASP episcopacy that collapsed two generations ago still controls this country’s wealth and power. (Indeed, it is hard to think of any pop culture product that doesn’t associate wealth with WASP privilege.) I’m told even told that “chic lit” novels routinely assume that all Upper East Side socialites hail from patrician WASP families and despise anyone who doesn’t. The authors of these novels then do book signings on the Upper East Side in front of audiences that know full well that the novels bear no resemblance to the world they actually live in.

In the end, Gossip Girl is an example of market failure. The public probably really would like to know how the rich live. WASPs, however, unlike others wealthy groups, have not formed a pressure group to punish studios that portray them unfavorably. (WASPs instead prefer to express themselves politically through benign environmental causes, with perhaps a little feminism mixed in.) Consequently, pop culture purveyors have zero tolerance for unflattering depictions of other groups, but give writers absolute license to defame WASPs.

Don’t pity the WASPs, who surely deserve their fate; pity instead the audiences who have to suffer though one hackneyed treatment of the upper class after another. Great fame and fortune awaits anyone who somehow manages to overcome this market failure. When he does, I might actually tune in and watch.
.....................................................................

Bramwell gets a lot of right here... I will comment more later, but I will say this, the new elite and new system still has to 'pretend' the old establishment exists. Why? And once people find out who really runs the prep schools, Ivy Leagues and most elite institutions in NYC if not a large part of the US and just how much their ethics have changed, what are the implications? For example, does our support of Israel take on a whole new light? Or our support of the Oligarchs and hostility towards Russia? What about the hostility towards Christmas ornaments? All the sudden it looks a lot more hatred than fairness.

Philip Weiss is the only one I know who speaks frankly about this, and lost his job at the Observer doing so. There are often spirited conversations often involving Jews and WASPs (I always thought that a bit redundant, since I have never seen an Anglo Saxon of color) at his website.

Amoral Familism

2008-09-24T09:59:00.004-05:00

Amoral Familism And Baby Formula

[Henry McCulloch] @ 3:43 pm [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

Although Phyllis Schlafly doesn’t use the term amoral familism, she sees what is at work in the Chinese tainted baby formula scandalPatrick Cleburne has covered for VDare.com. Cleburne also perceived immigration-driven amoral familism at the expense of Americans in the selective persecution of American teenagers by (unwelcome, to this American at least) Korean import and U.S. government lawyerGrace Chung Becker

Schlafly warns of Americans’–actually, all who rely on the Western, Christian tradition as an ethical foundation–need to be very wary in dealing with those whose traditions provide no such moral bedrock:

“The China infant milk scandal, even though it has so far not damaged any American babies, has exposed a major defect in the concept of free trade. It’s dangerous to buy products from a nation whose economy is not based on Judeo-Christian morality.
The American private enterprise system depends on honesty as normal and accepted behavior. We don’t have or want a policeman on every corner, or an army of government officials to inspect every bottle of baby formula or tube of toothpaste.
We do have regulations and random checks, but the majority of producers and sellers are restrained from criminality by adherence to the Judeo-Christian ethic.”[China Poisons Its Infant Formula, By Phyllis Schlafly--Townhall.com, September 23, 2008 ]

Everything Schlafly says here is true. But what she says is incomplete, and one more example of how even the most rock-ribbed-seeming of mainstream conservatives fail to grasp the most vital issues facing our fading civilization.

If, as Shlafly says, it is “dangerous to buy products from a nation whose economy is not based on Judeo-Christian morality”, isn’t it even more dangerous to import, through reckless and uncontrolled immigration, what amounts to a new domestic economy run by people from nations whose economies are not based on that morality, who as producers and sellers won’t be restrained from criminality by adherence to the Judeo-Christian ethic, because it is not theirs?

No doubt immigration enthusiasts will say the natives aren’t always restrained from criminality by Judeo-Christian ethics either. True but irrelevant, and nothing more than a reflection of fallen human nature. In fact, a realistic view of man’s condition only strengthens the arguments for restricting immigration – if one has to be somewhat wary even of one’s countrymen, who are supposed to be restrained by our traditional ethics, how can it make sense to import as our neighbors millions who obviously are not restrained by them at all, and may indeed find them laughable?

Mass immigration has introduced alien ethnic cronyism on a vast scale into America, as any student not only of today’s deluge but also of the Great Wave well knows. The whole point of amoral familism is that among many of the world’s ethnic groups honesty to those with whom one does not have close kinship ties is not normal and accepted behavior. As it happens, our suicidal immigration (non-)policies endlessly bring millions of members of just such ethnic groups here to be our neighbors. Americans, who in general do not practice amoral familism, are easily driven from entire sectors of our economy by those more conscious of their ethnic interests. To give only one example, when is the last time you saw a motel run by anything other than Indians? Think those Indians will hire your American kid to manage one? Since ordinary Americans seem incapable of acting consciously in their own ethnic interest, what we should do about this appears obvious.

So, many thanks to Phyllis Schlafly for this column, and for fighting the good fight for so long. But I can’t give Schlafly more than a B+ for this one, because she fails to reach the obvious conclusion: if Americans can’t trust imported products from low-trust societies, it makes no sense at all to import their producers, whose conduct is guided by those societies’ ethics. End immigration from such societies. As much as possible, reverse it.

And the next time you drop in to your local Chinese takeout for some cheap dumplings, you might give the Sanlu Group’s quality control a thought before you say “no MSG, please.”

........................................
Oh, no, according to free market fanatics (except of course for wall street) the 'free' market solves everything.....

Overall a good essay but "Judeo-Christian" is a silly way to phrase it, as anyone who has ever dealt with an Hasidim camera dealer knows. Seriously I think the 'high trust' civilization also comes from North European cultures and the only other society in the world that comes close is Japan's, though, for various reasons, they never developed a balance between the individual and society as we did (past tense).

But that is past. The Long March of the 1960s has succeeded - and the marxists/leftists/useful idiots who wanted to destroy our society have done so. The repercussions haven't hit in full force yet, but they will. The little discomfort we feel is only the beginning. As I often end posts...no wonder they want to ban guns.

An amnesty for stupidity...

2008-09-23T10:05:00.001-05:00

Middle-class American families have paid and paid – in lost jobs, lower wages, a falling median income – to save the big banks from the consequences of their follies. And those bank bailouts are behind the trade deficits that set five records in the Bush era, reached 6 percent of GDP, forced huge U.S. borrowings from abroad and ravaged the dollar.
more.....

Neocons: Save Wall Street, Screw Main Street

2008-09-22T11:41:00.004-05:00

That's been their agenda all along and now its as naked as ever...

I Say It’s Spinach, And I Say The Hell With It

Posted by Tom Piatak on September 19, 2008

Now that Henry Paulson has decided that the taxpayers will pay billions and billions of dollars to relieve Wall Street of the bad debt it can no longer successfully peddle, neoconservatives are lining up to salute. Here is David Frum, giving a “shout out” to Barney Frank for being “prescient” enough to call for Uncle Sam to pick up the tab for all the bad subprime mortgages and investment vehicles based on the bad loans that should never have been given, and would never have been given when prudent and reasonable people were responsible for home mortgages. But Frum is careful to retain some free market credibility by saying that this massive government intervention is “not like bailing out an automobile maker (a bad idea).”

Really? Chrysler repaid the government loans it got, and went on keeping tens of thousands of Americans in gainful employment. Even today, the Big Three are vital to the economic health of many American communities, particularly in the part of America I have always called home. Frum’s view is that the industrial Midwest can go to hell, but that Wall Street must always be cosseted. I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.

..................
Endless wars for fake 'democracy', open immigration, policies overtly designed to screw the middle class and break the Anglo-Protestant core of America, never before have they been so transparent.

Oh, and they are pro gun control as well...not surprising...
..............................................................
Astute commentary:
There are so many things wrong with Frum that one doesn’t know where to begin. But on this issue, supporting actual manufacturing and mere finance are completely different things. Finance is supposed to be a mere instrument of production, not an end in itself. Speculation converts finance into an end, not a means. But such speculative funds compete with productive investment.

The flood of funds into the housing market raised the price of houses, but this was not an economic gain; it was a loss. People do feel better when the price of their homes go up, but why should they? Adding 20% market value doesn’t make your home bigger. It could make it less stable, if the increase in value doesn’t arise (as it should) from an increase in economic activity in your area.

The bailout will fail, and the country along with it. We are close to collapse, and this is a last-ditch effort. The new president will have be faced with dire choices. One of those choices will be repression; the powers that be will do what it takes to hold on to power. Consider that as you vote.

Reason #214234523456 Not to Vote for McCain

2008-09-22T10:46:00.001-05:00

McCain vs. MIAs On YouTube

[Peter Brimelow] @ 9:45 am [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

I remarked yesterday that Sydney Schanberg’s account of John McCain losing his temper at MIA activist Dolores Alfond at a 1992 Senate hearing could be confirmed by the video record. Now our friend Jerri Ward has found it on YouTube:

McCain comes across as a pompous jerk and does indeed lose his temper. Of course, the Senate is full of pompous jerks. But this one is running for President. Whether there’s more going on - whether McCain is really motivated by a desire to supress the MIA issue - certainly remains an open question

The American Empire:

2008-09-22T10:42:00.002-05:00

The American Empire:
Too Big to Fail?

Who gets bailed out – and who doesn't

In reading about the federal bailout of all those financial wheeler-dealer outfits that are supposedly "too big to fail," the layman may be forgiven for failing to comprehend the intricacies of the arcane financial instruments currently backfiring on their whiz-kid inventors. Such exotic creatures as "credit default swaps" may elude the understanding of the hoi polloi, but one thing the man in the street does know: he'll never be "too big to fail," of that he can be sure.

He's just not the Bear-Stearns type, and Congress would never shell out a penny before he loses his savings and his home, which – due to the propaganda of Panglossian economics, whereby houses stopped being homes and became investments – amount to pretty much the same thing. The paper-pushers of Wall Street made untold trillions out of a policy that was doomed to fail [.pdf] in advance, and whose critics have long predicted would end in precisely the manner our tale of economic woe is unfolding.

The policy of bank credit expansion, which enriches the already wealthy at the expense of the rest of us, has a fatal allure. It induces an initial euphoria, the false promise of permanent prosperity. This Panglossian view is the perfect economic system for an emerging empire, especially one with such inflated pretensions as ours. It is the economics of hubris – the same grandiosity that let us imagine we could implant "democracy" in the arid soil of Iraq and make the desert bloom.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. bestrode the earth like a colossus, America's stock was rising, and the pride that goeth before a fall imbued our leaders with the illusion that they couldn't fail. The American empire, they thought, is too big to fail. It's the end of history – and the rest will just be a mopping-up operation, that will be well worth the costs.

The failed policies that led to our current economic predicament – the whole system of central banking and fiat currency – are precisely those policies that benefited those who are now demanding to be bailed out. They may have bankrupted the country, but you can be damned sure they aren't going down with the rest of us, no sirree!

The Really "Big" Bubbles...

2008-09-22T10:10:00.003-05:00

The signs of an investment bubble:
a. investors and pundits claim a 'new paradigm' and the old rules don't apply.
b. the market will never go down, prices will always rise (there will be ever increasing demand.
.................................................................................

Well, seems to me that our entire economy has become a bubble:
a. pundits claimed "deficits don't matter", and that the 'old rules' of a sound economy no longer applied ( diversified industries, strong manufacturing base).
b. we based our economy on 1. suburbanizing farmland 2.growing the population - common sense should tell us that this is obviously not sustainable but common sense has never played a part in any of this.

..................................................................................

So will the 'big bubble' burst - will foreign buyers of our T-bills and other government issued debt say, wait a minute! there's nothing to back this?

If that happens...then what?

The Other "Big Bubble" Is our government/elite engineered 'diverse' multicultural society (now even espoused and accepted by republicans.

Again, it 'threw out' the old rules of a civil society and claimed a "new paradigm". As I have repeatedly said, no country can have the sort of massive demographic changes we have had and not be radically altered -which, of course, was the point all along, but like the mortgage crisis, it can only lead to collapse, not paradise.

The Wall Street Journal Is Talking About Demolishing Homes,

2008-09-22T09:47:00.003-05:00

...to diminish the oversupply...yet our politicians are still backing Atlantic Yard's megadevelopment? what does that tell you about:
a. Ratner's political influence
b. the greed and stupidity of our politicians?

People are now estimating that the financial industry and housing markets could be depressed for ten years, which would mean New York City and New York State's tax revenue will be as well (since so much of it comes from those industries), yet Bloomberg and the state still want to sink billions in Atlantic Yards? They still want to give Ratner land to pave over into a huge parking lot that he 'might' start building on in ten or twenty years? The greed and backroom dealing is naked now - yet nothing from the press, not a pip from politicians- the seem to think they can get away with it. No wonder they are so adamant about gun control.

So When Does the Biggest Bubble of All Burst?

2008-09-22T09:44:00.002-05:00

...more later, I have work to do.

Paulson Missed the Bubble and Understated the Financial Crisis at Every Point

2008-09-22T09:41:00.003-05:00

From Dean Baker (who, by the way has a great book "the Conservative Nanny State")

Paulson Missed the Bubble and Understated the Financial Crisis at Every Point
Sunday, September 21, 2008 10:22 AM

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is telling Congress that if it doesn't give him a $700 billion blank check the financial system is going to collapse. It would be reasonable for reporters discussing this request to present some background on the track record of the person asking for this enormous blank check.

In March of 2007, after the first shock waves of the housing meltdown had already hit, the Associated Press reported Mr. Paulson's view that the credit difficulties linked to the housing slump would be limited.

In August of last year, after the second round of financial shock waves disrupted markets worldwide, Paulson commented, "We have the strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime."

Just last March he warmly endorsed a reduction in the capital requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying "additional capital [invested in mortgages by Fannie and Freddie] will enable the companies to help more homeowners and will strengthen the underlying fundamentals of the mortgage market."

At every point along the way, Secretary Paulson has failed to see the extent of the crisis resulting from the collapse of the housing bubble. This raises serious questions about his judgment. Reporters should be discussing Paulson't track record in the context of this bailout proposal.

--Dean Baker

.....................................................................
Yes Mr. Baker, they should be, but they won't. Just like they refused to even recognize the housing bubble, ignored the mass evidence against WMD in Iraq, and so on. Our press serves powerful interests, not the truth.

Gov. To Taxpayers: Bend Over a Little Bit More, Please...

2008-09-22T08:58:00.002-05:00

Default Swaps May Be Next In Credit Crisis

Ultimate Moral Hazard Looms in the Markets

By JULIE SATOW, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 22, 2008

The biggest Wall Street story most Americans haven't yet heard of is the $62 trillion unregulated credit default swaps market.

The Diversity Recession: What Was The Financial (And Political) Establishment Thinking?

2008-09-22T08:38:00.002-05:00

Steve Sailer writes::

The Diversity Recession: What Was The Financial (And Political) Establishment Thinking?

By Steve Sailer

The weird thing about the tumbling of the latest financial house of cards is that the cornerstone, such as it was, was confidence in the increasing ability of the bottom half of society to pay back unprecedentedly large debts.

Underlying these vast pyramids of debt was, all too often, a promise by a single mother who works at the DMV or a drywaller from Chiapas to (following a brief teaser period) make mortgage payments of, say, $3750 per month for the next several decades.

............

What's totally strange about the mortgage meltdown, however, is that the bet, at its base, was on the more marginal members of society to be able to pay off their inflated debts—a bet on the pretty-close-to-poor to get pretty-close-to-rich.

And that made no sense at all.

.......

Are you some kind of Communist who is saying that America''s free enterprise system can't generate enough high-paying jobs to pay for all this debt?

Are you some kind of racist who is saying that America's increasingly diverse population won't pay back their debts?

Oh, wait—it just didn’t.

And they just haven’t.

Hmmm.

[Steve Sailer (email him) is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His website www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily blog.]

If you only read one Line from the Buchanan Article Below

2008-09-19T09:33:00.015-05:00

make sure it is this::

An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation.

....................................
What is this financial elite going to do next? They are hoping to deliver the knock out blow the middle class (who would oppose any radical restructuring of government) - which will mean the end of the US and the beginning of a North American Union. They will use this 'crisis' to raise taxes, increase government control while simultaneously dismantling it - discombobulated as that sounds - one can see it in action in the UK /Labour/Tory government alliance..

The party's over

2008-09-19T09:33:00.009-05:00

The party's over
Pat Buchanan on Wall Street: 'What we are witnessing today is how empires end'
Posted: September 19, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

By Patrick J. Buchanan

The Crash of 2008, which is now wiping out trillions of dollars of our people's wealth, is, like the Crash of 1929, likely to mark the end of one era and the onset of another.

The new era will see a more sober and much diminished America. The "Omnipower" and "Indispensable Nation" we heard about in all the hubris and braggadocio following our Cold War victory is history.

Seizing on the crisis, the left says we are witnessing the failure of market economics, a failure of conservatism.

This is nonsense. What we are witnessing is the collapse of Gordon Gecko ("Greed Is Good!") capitalism. What we are witnessing is what happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history, and forgets and abandons the philosophy and principles that made it great.

A true conservative cherishes prudence and believes in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and a self-reliant republic. He believes in saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot afford, in living within your means.

(Column continues below)

Is that really what got Wall Street and us into this mess – that we followed too religiously the gospel of Robert Taft and Russell Kirk?

"Government must save us!" cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us into this mess if not the government – the Fed with its easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy?

For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt – all are at record levels. And with pensions and savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid.

Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall. For foreigners will not forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they rightly fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in cheaper dollars.

We are going to have to learn to live again without our means.

The party's over

Up through World War II, we followed the Hamiltonian idea that America must remain economically independent of the world in order to remain politically independent.

But this generation decided that was yesterday's bromide and we must march bravely forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on one another. American companies morphed into "global companies" and moved plants and factories to Mexico, Asia, China and India, and we began buying more cheaply from abroad what we used to make at home: shoes, clothes, bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers.

As the trade deficits began inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we began vast borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad.

At home, propelled by tax cuts, war in Iraq and an explosion in social spending, surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar.

Yet, still, the promises of the politicians come. Barack Obama will give us national health insurance and tax cuts for all but that 2 percent of the nation that already carries 50 percent of the federal income tax load.

John McCain is going to cut taxes, expand the military, move NATO into Georgia and Ukraine, confront Russia and force Iran to stop enriching uranium or "bomb, bomb, bomb," with Joe Lieberman as wartime consigliere.

Who are we kidding?

What we are witnessing today is how empires end.

The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its currency, win its wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars.

What we are witnessing today is nothing less than a Katrina-like failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy itself, casting a cloud over the viability and longevity of the system.

Notice who is managing the crisis. Not our elected leaders. Nancy Pelosi says she had nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and heading home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen.

Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to bail out Bear Sterns but let Lehman go under. They decided to nationalize Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion in mortgages. They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion rather than see the insurance giant sink beneath the waves.

An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators.

What the Greatest Generation handed down to us – the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved – the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away.

Top Broker: NYC Real Estate Already in Steep Decline

2008-09-19T09:33:00.008-05:00

Top Broker: NYC Real Estate Already in Steep Decline

"Investment Banker" Now a Dirty Word at Park Avenue Co-Op Apartments

By BRIAN ROSS
September 18, 2008

8 comments

FONT SIZE

Manhattan's finest co-op apartments may have already lost a fourth of their value as a result of the financial crisis, and the worst is yet to come, says leading New York estate broker Kathy Sloane, of Brown Harris Stevens.

Manhattan's finest co-op apartments, like these along Park Avanue on the Upper East Side, may have...

(Daniel Barry/Bloomberg News/Landov)

An owner of a five-million dollar Park Avenue apartment, only an average residence by investment banker standards, "may be lucky to achieve $3.5 million" a month from now, said Sloane, whose clients have included celebrities, the super-rich and prominent families including the Clintons.

"If someone saw a bid between $3.8 million and $4.2 million from a qualified buyer, take that bid," said Sloane in an interview to be broadcast on 20/20 Friday night.

Public Absorbs the Risk and Loss, Private Companies Absorb the Profit.

2008-09-19T09:33:00.007-05:00

Wow, just like Atlantic Yards.

Ron Paul On Obama's fake 'Change"

2008-09-19T09:33:00.005-05:00

Ron Paul On McCain, and on Mr Change...

2008-09-19T09:33:00.003-05:00

EVERYTHING'S OK! (the market rallied)

2008-09-19T09:33:00.002-05:00

Yes, everything's ok!. I received a half dozen emails yesterday berating my 'pesmisstic' outlook on the economy, and the 'proof' I was wrong was in the market rally. Amazing, well maybe not, maybe, typical:

"We will not have any more crashes in our time."
- John Maynard Keynes in 1927

"I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool's paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future."
- E. H. H. Simmons, President, New York Stock Exchange, January 12, 1928

"There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity."
- Myron E. Forbes, President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., January 12, 1928

"No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. In the domestic field there is tranquility and contentment...and the highest record of years of prosperity. In the foreign field there is peace, the goodwill which comes from mutual understanding."
- Calvin Coolidge December 4, 1928

"There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash."
- Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist , New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929

"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as (bears) have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months."
- Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in economics, Oct. 17, 1929

"This crash is not going to have much effect on business."
- Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago, October 24, 1929

"There will be no repetition of the break of yesterday... I have no fear of another comparable decline."
- Arthur W. Loasby (President of the Equitable Trust Company), quoted in NYT, Friday, October 25, 1929

"We feel that fundamentally Wall Street is sound, and that for people who can afford to pay for them outright, good stocks are cheap at these prices."
- Goodbody and Company market-letter quoted in The New York Times, Friday, October 25, 1929

"This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan... that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years."
- R. W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

"Buying of sound, seasoned issues now will not be regretted"
- E. A. Pearce market letter quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

"Some pretty intelligent people are now buying stocks... Unless we are to have a panic -- which no one seriously believes, stocks have hit bottom."
- R. W. McNeal, financial analyst in October 1929

"The decline is in paper values, not in tangible goods and services...America is now in the eighth year of prosperity as commercially defined. The former great periods of prosperity in America averaged eleven years. On this basis we now have three more years to go before the tailspin."
- Stuart Chase (American economist and author), NY Herald Tribune, November 1, 1929

"Hysteria has now disappeared from Wall Street."
- The Times of London, November 2, 1929

"The Wall Street crash doesn't mean that there will be any general or serious business depression... For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game... Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before."
- Business Week, November 2, 1929

"...despite its severity, we believe that the slump in stock prices will prove an intermediate movement and not the precursor of a business depression such as would entail prolonged further liquidation..."
- Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 2, 1929

"... a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall."
- HES, November 10, 1929

"The end of the decline of the Stock Market will probably not be long, only a few more days at most."
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, November 14, 1929

"In most of the cities and towns of this country, this Wall Street panic will have no effect."
- Paul Block (President of the Block newspaper chain), editorial, November 15, 1929

"Financial storm definitely passed."
- Bernard Baruch, cablegram to Winston Churchill, November 15, 1929

"I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism... I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring, and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress."
- Andrew W. Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 31, 1929

"I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence."
- Herbert Hoover, December 1929

"[1930 will be] a splendid employment year."
- U.S. Dept. of Labor, New Year's Forecast, December 1929

"For the immediate future, at least, the outlook (stocks) is bright."
- Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in Economics, in early 1930

"...there are indications that the severest phase of the recession is over..."
- Harvard Economic Society (HES) Jan 18, 1930

"There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about."
- Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, Feb 1930

"The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity."
- Julius Barnes, head of Hoover's National Business Survey Conference, Mar 16, 1930

"... the outlook continues favorable..."
- HES Mar 29, 1930

"... the outlook is favorable..."
- HES Apr 19, 1930

"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst -- and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us."
- Herbert Hoover, President of the United States, May 1, 1930

"...by May or June the spring recovery forecast in our letters of last December and November should clearly be apparent..."
- HES May 17, 1930

"Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over."
- Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery, June 1930

"... irregular and conflicting movements of business should soon give way to a sustained recovery..."
- HES June 28, 1930

"... the present depression has about spent its force..."
- HES, Aug 30, 1930

"We are now near the end of the declining phase of the depression."
- HES Nov 15, 1930

"Stabilization at [present] levels is clearly possible."
- HES Oct 31, 1931

"All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S."
- President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933

In Talking With Even Financial Folk...

2008-09-18T09:14:00.014-05:00

People don't seem to really comprehend the magnitude of what just happened. The government has effectively nationalized huge portions of the financial industry, which in turn, can control huge portions of the rest of the economy.

This means the government - who knows what branch yet, but lets assume the executive - now has the means to carry out policies without constitutional consent and outside the normal structure of government.

Andrew Sullivan Actually Posted Something Intelligent On His Blog?

2008-09-18T09:14:00.011-05:00

the wonders of financial turmoil...of course, its a quote from someone else:

"I fear the government has passed the point of no return. We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams. It’s pure crisis management. It’s the Treasury and the Federal Reserve lurching from crisis to crisis without a clear statement on how financial failures will be handled in the future. They’re afraid to articulate such a policy. The safety net they are spreading seems to widen every day with no end in sight," - Ron Chernow, a leading American financial historian

When they say don't Panic.......

2008-09-18T09:14:00.009-05:00

From Dean Baker @ Beat the Press:

Surprised Economists Urge People Not to Panic on NPR

NPR had a segment on Morning Edition which featured several economists urging people not to pull their money out of money market funds. All three economists told people that money market funds are still very safe, even though some did report losses due to the recent turmoil in financial markets.

It is worth noting that the expert crew on NPR were all caught by surprised by this financial turmoil. Listeners should keep this in mind in assessing their current perspectives. This is one reason why NPR and other media outlets should seek our non-surprised experts for their assessments of the situation. (For the record, I would largely concur with their assessment of money market funds, although I would say the risk is not zero.)

It Just Occurred To Me....

2008-09-18T09:14:00.007-05:00

George Bush has nationalized the largest portion of the finance industry since FDR. He has expanded the government and spending in like proportions that will only get worse. So what, exactly do the Republicans stand for?

Nicholas Stix Nails It Again.

2008-09-18T09:14:00.006-05:00

The Heretical 2: Requests for Asylum and Letters from Santa Ana Jail

[Nicholas Stix] @ 3:39 pm [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

On July 31, in The Heretical 2: Asylum Seekers the Refugee Industry Won’t be Fighting for, I wrote of two Englishmen, writer Stephen Whittle (pen name Luke O’Farrell), 41, and his publisher, Simon Sheppard, 51, both of whom were convicted in July in England of“publishing racially inflammatory written material.”

On September 11, I wrote on the case of 19-year-old Jeremiah Munsen, an American who on Monday began a four-month federal prison sentence in Louisiana for engaging in symbolic speech that is protected by the First Amendment. Monday’s VDARE.com mailout asked,“Why is Obama’s Friend Bill Ayers Free and Jeremiah Munsen in Jail?” Until fairly recently, the English-language world was a beacon of freedom of opinion. Today, however, the “land of the free,” England, Canada and Australia are increasingly indistinguishable from EU, Communist, and Third-World tyrannies.

Whittle is guilty of having written essays variously excoriating and mocking Jews, Moslems and blacks (and Jews), Jews, blacks (and Jews), Jews and their Gentile “useful idiots”, homosexuals (and Jews); and Sheppard of having published them, which in England are crimes. (In England, it is not a crime to write anti-white, anti-Christian screeds.) Yes, folks, we’re in Alex Linder country.

While free pending sentencing, Whittle and Sheppard fled to America, where they immediately sought asylum and were arrested. Since then, America’s MSM have kept their existence a more closely guarded secret than what Barack Obama/Dunham/Soetoro did on theChicago Annenberg Challenge. If only Whittle and Sheppard were belligerent Moslem Bantu, HIV+, or Hispanic, illegal immigrant, gang-bangers, they’d by now be safely ensconced in the refugee-industrial complex.

Writing from jail, Whittle and Sheppard asked a mutual acquaintance, who has requested anonymity, to pass along their letters and requests for political asylum to me. Note that the legal arguments used against them by the Bush Administration could transform the Internet from a tool of worldwide intellectual liberation to one of global enslavement.[VDARE.COM note: All links below were added by VDARE.com--the pleas themselves were written with a Bic pen.]

14 August 2008

REQUESTS FOR POLITICAL ASYLUM
SHEPPARD, SIMON GUY and WHITTLE, STEPHEN
SUMMARY
The Applicants arrived at LAX on 14 July 2008 and made their asylum request to the first official they encountered. The basis for their asylum claim. Is a three-year claim of legal harassment by the governing British Labour Party,culminating in an unprecedented prosecution and subsequent conviction for internet web pages hosted in Torrance, California. Were the applicants to be returned to Britain they would face substantial prison terms.

...............................
Stix nails it here- its not about whether you agree with Whittle and Shepherd (as he humorously alludes to concerning their Jewish conspiracy mongering) its the fact that those on the 'outer edge' of free speech are now being openly prosecuted and our government - republican and democrat - in collusion with European governments.

Once that standard is set, the next 'outer edge' can be prosecuted, and so on. Hate the use the tired holocuast cliche, but first they came for the communists... Though this time, it is the communists coming for us.

This isn't really about 'hate' as Stix points out - any wack theory can easily be debated and refuted. Its about suppression of thought.

The Obama Campaign's Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

2008-09-18T09:14:00.005-05:00

The Obama Campaign's Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

Barack Obama really, really doesn't like people mentioning his past.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Now Obama's presidential campaign is increasingly using the list to beat back media messages it does not like, calling on supporters to flood radio and television stations when those opposed to him run anti-Obama ads or appear on talk shows.

It did so as recently as Monday night, when it orchestrated a massive stream of complaints on the phone lines of Tribune Co.-owned WGN-AM in Chicago when the radio station hosted author David Freddoso, who has written a controversial book about the Illinois Democrat.

The latest use of the database, called the Obama Action Wire, is proving yet another new and potentially powerful tactic in the closing weeks of a campaign that has already been dominated by Internet-based messages and media. ...
"The Action Wire serves as a means of arming our supporters with the facts to take on those who spread lies about Barack Obama and respond forcefully with the truth, whether it's an author passing off fiction as biography, a Web site spreading baseless conspiracy theories or a TV station airing an ad that makes demonstrably false claims," said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt.

Sen. John McCain's campaign uses the Internet for fundraising and organization but does not have anything like Obama's alert system to bombard a specific media outlet in real time.

Obama's campaign says supporters have placed thousands of phone calls to TV and radio stations and sent even more letters to newspapers.

A page on the campaign's Web site, headlined "Hit 'em where it hurts," told supporters how to complain to advertisers at stations that ran a recent anti-Obama ad.

"We'll provide you with talking points on this maliciously false hit ad to help guide you through the process," the page said, citing a spot run by a conservative group called the American Issues Project.

The campaign says supporters sent roughly 100,000 e-mails in August to stations that aired the ad, which criticized Obama for his ties to former 1960s radical William Ayers.

WGN also was flooded with calls and e-mails shortly before and during an Aug. 27 interview with Stanley Kurtz, a conservative writer who has examined Obama's ties to Ayers.

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," read the first message confronting the station, an e-mail that also provided detailed background information on Kurtz, Obama and Ayers.

The WGN alerts were sent primarily to Obama supporters in the Chicago area but were quickly posted to electronic message boards and Web sites, spreading them worldwide. Many of those who called to complain were from outside Illinois, and they flooded the station's switchboard in a way a WGN producer called "unprecedented."

On Monday night, Zack Christenson, executive producer of "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg," said the response was about the same. "It's just constant, constant phone calls, and the e-mails are pouring in," he said, adding that the extra volume of calls made it more difficult to run the show.

Obama's campaign describes the system as a grass-roots truth squad that arms supporters with information. But others see an attempt to stifle free speech.

"If Barack Obama demonstrates this little regard for free speech from his opponents during the campaign, what could the American people expect from him as a president?" Ed Martin, president of American Issues Project, said in a statement.

I've read Fredosso's book. If there are lies in it (and I didn't notice any), Obama should sue for libel. Lotsa luck with that, Barack.

The emerging method of political power, as pioneered by Berlusconi in Italy, and imitated by Putin in Russia and by Chavez, less effectively, in Venezuela is to control what can be said on television and radio.

Obama won't actually own the airwaves and there is still that pesky First Amendment, but it appears that his team is working out a plan to use mobs to intimidate media outlets. Think about it from a station manager's point of view -- We could interview some reporter who has spent months investigating Obama's relationship with Tony Rezko, and have all our advertisers receive countless fulminating emails forwarded from Team Obama threatening to never buy their products again ... or we could do a segment on Megan Fox.

Sure, it's hard to sell books without doing publicity tour interviews, so there will be fewer books about President Obama, but the publishers can instead sign Megan Fox up to write her autobiography, so everybody's happy, right?

Further, considering how much the U.S. government suddenly seems to more or less own as of this week, all sorts of new possibilities are opened up. Matthew Yglesias is already salivating over what President Obama could do as the ultimate owner of the country's biggest insurance company:

In November, there’s going to be an election. And in January, there’ll be a new President. And in the interim, progressive groups will probably come up with a lot of “ten ways to make everything awesome” proposals. And it’ll take 41 conservative senators to filibuster them all, and so they’ll all be filibustered. But if the government directly controls major financial institutions, that would give the new administration extraordinary leverage over the national economy. Suppose the new CEO of AIG decided he didn’t want to insure assets of companies whose executives make unseemly multiples of the national median income? There are all kinds of crazy things you could do. And of course not all of them woul dbe good ideas. But some of them would! And the smart folks on our side need to be figuring out which ones they are. It seems doubtful to me that a progressive administration would ever be able to get away with this much nationalizing of everything, but what’s done is done and I think it creates a real opportunity for “socially conscious insurance underwriting” or whatever you care to call it.

Fortunately, Obama has a trusted long-time adviser with decades of experience running socially conscious public-private partnerships. That man is otherwise occupied at the moment, but a President Obama has the Presidential Pardon to spring Tony Rezko out of the correctional facility and into the West Wing.

Reminder:: Obama Gets More Money From Wall Street Than McCaine (not that I would vote for either)

2008-09-17T09:31:00.000-05:00

Put simply, the Man of Change doesn’t threaten the status quo in the least.

Freddie and Fannie spent more than $200 million on lobbying over the past decade, most of it going to Democrats, and they were “re-nationalized” with bipartisan support. Lehman Brother, which Paulson thankfully resisted bailing out, has accounted for almost$400,000 in donations to the Obama campaign. It’s thus likely that Obama would have been more assiduous in helping out his Wall Street buddies than Paulson and the Bush administration.

Subprime Crisis :: partially caused by Multicultulturalism

2008-09-17T09:25:00.002-05:00

....or our obsession with race/equality:

The Real Culprits In This Meltdown
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it.

Steve Sailer coined it the "diversity recession":

The Diversity Recession, or How Affirmative Action Helped Cause the Housing Crisis
Posted by Steve Sailer on June 22, 2008

Uncovering the roots of the disastrous home mortgage bubble that popped last year will keep economic historians busy for decades. Yet, one factor has so far been largely overlooked: the bipartisan social engineering crusade to drive up the rate of homeownership by handing out more mortgages to minorities.

More than a negligible amount of the blame for the mortgage meltdown can be traced back to multiculturalism: government-mandated affirmative-action lending, demographic change, illegal immigration, and the mind-numbing effects of political correctness.

................................................................
Yes the usual culprits:: greedy moneylenders and lax Federal Reserve that allowed banks to literally 'print' money are both major factors, but the race issue helped shield them from scrutiny.

Dean Baker On NYT on Greenspan::

2008-09-16T10:24:00.000-05:00

The NYT Turns to the Arsonist to Analyze the Fire: Greenspan on Bank Bailouts

Alan Greenspan is certainly in a position to know about the problems the financial system is facing. After all, there is no one who bears greater responsibility for today's events.

But, it would be appropriate to remind readers that Greenspan was the arsonist here. He was the one who choose to ignore the abusive lending practices in the mortgage industry that became widespread under his tenure. He was the one who chose to ignore the growth of an $8 trillion housing bubble.

When he said that, "This is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event," it might have been worth pointing out that he was the arsonist who created the conditions for the extraordinary set of events hitting Wall Street.

Niyaz Has New Album..

2008-09-15T16:10:00.003-05:00

...here...Ishq - Love and the Veil is my favorite tune thus far.

you can download mp3s direct from six degrees or amazon.

Great Idea!!

2008-09-15T11:14:00.002-05:00

10-bank emergency fund: In a bid to calm the markets, the Federal Reserve announced plans Sunday to loosen its lending restrictions to the banking industry. A consortium of 10 leading domestic and foreign banks, including Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), Barclays (BCS) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), agreed to create a $70 billion fund to lend to troubled financial firms.

The Federal Reserve, meeting Tuesday, could cut the fed funds rate, a key short-term interest rate, from the current level of 2%, analysts said.

link
.................................................................

Yep, that's what we should do, loosen the lending even MORE, and put out MORE cheap money...because Wall Street was SO responsible and prudent....

SO what if it causes inflation and financial instability for middle class America, those investment bankers need our help.

An "Atlas Shrugged" Moment?

2008-09-14T20:42:00.004-05:00

I am not much of a fan of Ayn Rand, but with this weekend's head on train collision and impending black Monday, the result of corruption and socialized mortgages (everyone has the 'right' to own a home)it seems eerily reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged. One "slight" detail Rand got wrong:: the 'Altas's would be going to the government for help.

for the last, oh 80 years, we have had policies that help wall street and hurt main street…anyone surprised?
One thing is for sure:: the repubs and free market loving (for main street that is) wall street types will NEVER be able to oppose socialization on idealogical grounds again. In other words the end result of this mess - created by the guys yelling ‘free market’ will be socialization as bad as FDR’s new de

Fairweather free marketeers

2008-09-12T09:51:00.002-05:00

Lehman races to find rescuerBy Jamie McGeever and Joseph A. Giannone

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Concerns that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc may not arrange a U.S. government-backed takeover quickly sent its shares down early Friday after reports the investment bank was in talks with Bank of America raised investor hopes of a rescue overnight.

.......................................
Hmmm the same people who flippantly told us globalization was good, it might hurt a little, but so what if middle America lost millions of jobs and saw declining standards of living...but now their own financial imprudence is catching up with Wall Street, there is surprisingly little 'free market' talk.. and lots of 'we need government help' talk.

Even though it was Greenspan /Clinton years that was largely responsible for this (though Bush and CO are too blame as well) the fact that the super rich bankers are being bailed out will mean that republicans will NEVER be able to oppose subsidies for the poor on any idealogical basis. In other words, coming and going, right and left, government will continue to grow -much like Atlantic yards, the very poor will be used by the very rich to break the back of and steal from, the middle class, the productive class, the civic class.

For global elitists it not only lines their own pockets, but fulfills idealogical goals as well. Wreck nations, displace peoples, break down borders.

Bloomberg: Liar or Ignorant?

2008-09-12T09:31:00.003-05:00

A more polite DDDB asks:

What Does Mayor Bloomberg Know About Atlantic Yards?

In the aftermath of yesterday's NY Times article with a number of bombshells including confirmation that Ratner is lobbying government officials for $100 million more in taxpayer subisides, Mayor Bloomberg was asked at a press conference if the city would provide that additional subsidy. The Mayor's response:
"The economics of building have changed -- they've gotten worse, not better. We desperately need to have development and that's a very big part of development in Brooklyn. I don't know that we have to put development money in, but we certainly will do everything we can to work with Ratner to get those buildings going. That's the future of this city. That's the jobs for your children. That's the taxes to pay our teachers, and police officers, and firefighters, today."
"I don't know if we have to put money in...", the Mayor said.

.....................................

Hmm, Mayor Bloomberg worked at Solomon Brothers and made his billions creating a financial reporting system. Are we really to believe that he could be so ignorant of such a huge project that he even says is has a great impact on the city? I find that hard to believe. I think Mayor Bloomberg is lying and he knows his fellow elitists will help him out by overlooking the lie and in fact, passing it along as news.

Of course he might have told himself a self-deceptive 'lie' such as 'since it will be a net gain in tax revenue for the city, we really aren't putting money in' or some variation thereof. Either way, its still a bold faced lie.

Damn This Guy's Good...

2008-09-11T12:45:00.001-05:00

Nicholas stixx that is (penname) I suspect, from his writing that we grew up in similar if not the same neighborhoods at the same time.

O Canada!–Modern Show Trials

[Nicholas Stix] @ 11:22 am [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

On August 22, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal sentenced Jeremiah Munsen to four months in federal prison, to be followed by one year of supervised probation and 125 hours of community service, to be followed by five more years of unsupervised probation, after he accepted a plea bargain for committing a hate crime.

We Americans like to fancy ourselves protected from such “star chamber”-type tyranny. “It couldn’t happen here.”

Oh, but it could, and it did. Except for the reference to the “Canadian Human Rights Tribunal,” everything in my opening paragraph is true, Jeremiah Munsen was subjected to a malicious prosecution in a U.S. federal kangaroo court, by Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Grace Chung Becker, and U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana Donald W. Washington.

On September 20, 2007 in Alexandria, Louisiana, the then-18-year-old Munson, accompanied by an under-aged friend, drove past dozens of black supporters of the Jena race hoax, with two extension cord “nooses” hanging from the back of his pickup truck.

Yeah, that guy.

U.S. Attorney Washington piled on duplicate, unconstitutional and illegal felony and misdemeanor charges such that, had the penniless, despised Munsen fought them, he would have been summarily convicted on a “felony hate crime charge of conspiring to deprive the marchers of their civil rights by using a noose to intimidate the crowd,” and sentenced to up to 11 years in prison. Washington and Becker thereby coerced Munson, in April, into making a guilty plea “to a misdemeanor federal hate crime of interrupting protesters’ federal rights to travel.”

For any slender, white teenager, serving 11 years of hard time on any charge with black and Hispanic felons entails racist gang-rape, sexual slavery and, ultimately, death from AIDS, in violation of the Constitution’sEighth (“cruel and unusual punishment”) and Thirteenth (slavery) amendments. Doubtless, the folks at Justice saw to it that Munsen knew what awaited him.

His sentence begins on September 15.

This was an American show trial.

Never mind that Munsen engaged in symbolic speech that is protected under the First Amendment.

Never mind that the two unarmed whites were in much greater peril from a throng of racist blacks, than the blacks were from them. The blacks were waiting for buses home to Tennessee after the Nuremberg-style rally they had just attended, in support of six black high school students who had with others engaged in a racist murder attempt on a lone white victim, whom the brave blacks had suckerpunched, and stomped as he lay unconscious.

Such black-on-white gang attacks happen every day in schools across America.

In the Department of Justice’s press release celebrating Munsen’s conviction, U.S Attorney Washington claimed,

The defendant committed a federal hate crime by using a powerful symbol of hate to intimidate a group of interstate travelers because of their race. It is a violation of federal law to intimidate, oppress, injure or threaten people because of their race and because those people are exercising and enjoying rights guaranteed and protected by the laws and Constitution of the United States. Our civil rights laws protect the civil rights of all Americans, and they emphasize the reality that we are all members of one particular race — the human race.

What about Jeremiah Munsen’s civil rights?

Were Washington and Becker familiar with American constitutional law, or with the the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act (sections 202 and 301), they would know that that they were violating Munsen’s First Amendment right to engage in symbolic speech others deem offensive, and Fourteenth Amendment and Civil Rights Act rights to equality before the law, based on his race.

It is Becker and Washington who belong in prison.

You can have civil rights laws and their machinery of anarcho-tyranny, or you can have the Bill of Rights, but not both. And without the Bill of Rights, there is no America.

The Irrelevance Of 9/11, Continued

2008-09-11T09:16:00.003-05:00

The Irrelevance Of 9/11, Continued

[Peter Brimelow] @ 12:10 am [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

In the introduction to tonight’s Peter Gadiel article, I wrote “As I said in 2007, I now think there’s no point in writing anniversary reflections on 9/11—nothing changed; America’s elites didn’t really care; they all just got on with their various agendas. “

...................................................
What did fat-ass Ratner do after 9-11? Got his fat, greasy hands on Liberty bonds for projects in Brooklyn- in other words, soaking taxpayers and profiting off a tragedy. He went on to insult firefighters by commissioning a statue of this famous scene:

but changed the racial composition of the firefighters (one black ,one "hispanic", one white, gee weren't the asians angry?). Why? Bruce Ratner is a global elitist, one bent on destroying the American middle class and 'native' populations of America - if he were in England or France, or any western country he and his ilk would be pulling the same thing.

As with Atlantic yards he has cleverly made use of race and ethnicity and the tensions associated with it, to line his own pockets. How does he do it, one might ask, doesn't his conscience bother him? If he had one, it might. Rootless global elitists are utterly lacking in that one feature that helps make up cohesive societies.

How Many Americans?

2008-09-10T11:06:00.005-05:00

Shocking that WP would publish this:
How Many Americans?

By Steven A. Camarota
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; A15

When the Census Bureau released its new population projections last month, most of the media focused on the country's changing racial composition. But this was almost certainly not the most important finding. The projections show that the U.S. population will grow by 135 million in just 42 years -- a 44 percent increase. Such growth would have profound implications for our environment and quality of life. Most of the increase would be a direct result of one federal policy -- immigration. If we reduced the level of immigration, the projections would be much lower. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we want to be a much more densely settled country?

Native-born Americans have only about two children on average, which makes for a roughly stable population over time. But with an estimated 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants settling in the country each year, and about 900,000 births to these immigrants each year, immigration directly and indirectly accounts for at least three-fourths of U.S. population growth.

An increase of 135 million people by 2050 is equivalent to the entire populations of Mexico and Canada moving here. Assuming the same ratio of population to infrastructure that exists today, the United States would need to build and pay for 36,000 schools. We would need to develop enough land to accommodate 52 million new housing units, along with places for the people who lived in them to shop and work. We would also have to construct enough roads to handle 106 million more vehicles.

Of course, our country can "fit" more people. But such a dramatic increase would affect many issues about which Americans are concerned, including the environment, traffic, congestion, sprawl and the loss of open spaces. Technology and planning could help manage this situation, but there is no way they could offset all of the impact of 135 million more people. This massive increase also would have implications for the size and scope of government; more densely settled societies almost always are more heavily regulated societies.

Another important finding in the census projections is that, even with record levels of immigration for the next four decades, the U.S. population will still grow significantly older. Immigration makes our society only slightly younger than it would otherwise be. (Consider that, on average, the overall fertility rate in the United States is about 2.1 children per woman. If immigrants are excluded from the data, it's still about 2.0 children per woman. This compares with 1.4 children in Western Europe. Immigration makes for a much more densely settled country; it does not make for a much younger country.) As the Census Bureau stated in its 2000 projections, immigration is a "highly inefficient" means for addressing the problem of an aging society in the long run. The new projections show the same thing.

Some people think that immigration creates large economic benefits. But the economic research is pretty clear: While immigration does significantly increase economic activity in the receiving society, almost all of that increased activity go to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits. The gain to natives is tiny. When the National Research Council, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences, examined this question, it concluded that the benefits for native-born Americans were equal to only about one- or two-tenths of 1 percent of their income. The two economists who did the work for the council described the effect as "minuscule."

Moreover, this tiny economic benefit was entirely erased by the fiscal drain immigrant households imposed on taxpayers. Perhaps worst of all, the researchers found that to generate this small gain, immigration reduced the wages of the least educated and poorest American workers.

There is no question that immigrants benefit by coming here. But it is difficult to argue that immigration is a well-targeted way to lift up the world's poor. Many immigrants to the United States were not poor in their home countries. More important, although immigration causes an enormous increase in the overall U.S. population, it still represents an infinitesimal fraction of the world's low-income population. We can do more to help poor people in developing countries through trade policies and development assistance.

The United States may well decide to continue to allow the settlement of 1.5 million immigrants (legal and illegal) each year. But legal immigration is a federal program like any other and could be reduced below the 1 million currently allowed to enter annually. Greater resources could also be devoted to reducing illegal immigration. It's important to understand that the new projections show us one possible future. We must decide as a country if this is the future we want.

The writer is director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

div>

.....................................................................

What more can be said about our elite when they ignore and in fact celebrate an unsustainable, damaging social economic pattern? The reality is so clear but people are blinded by idealogy and cannot see it. Despite the riots, violence, rapes, overcrowding, ethnic tension, a collective 'rootless' feeling, the ever declinging standard of living for working class americans, the 'system' continues giving us more of the same.

Another interesting angle. The immediate reaction, of course, is to accuse those who want immigration reduced of 'racism' (a handy accusation for just about anything these days). But that begs the question, if "hispanics' can advocate more of their race and reducing say, native born white American's power/% of the population, why is that 'ok'? Why is it ok for anyone to advocate marginlizing native born Americans, and for that matter, Europeans (because the same accusations fly in Europe). Once people seriously, publicly ask that, the end game will begin.

300 Million, A Billion, What' the Difference....

2008-09-10T11:06:00.001-05:00

Fairness at the Washington Post!!! WSJ Next?

[Patrick Cleburne] @ 1:50 am [Email author] [Email this article] [Print this article]

Congratulations to Steve Camarota of CIS, who has managed to get through the PC filter at the Washington Post, and get an Op-ed piece published on the immigration issue (How Many Americans? September 2, 2008)

The article at first glance is focused on the issue of the impact of immigration on population numbers:

…projections show that the U.S. population will grow by 135 million in just 42 years — a 44 percent increase. Such growth would have profound implications for our environment and quality of life. Most of the increase would be a direct result of one federal policy — immigration. If we reduced the level of immigration, the projections would be much lower. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we want to be a much more densely settled country?

But, stealthily, it gets round to the key economic issue:

While immigration does significantly increase economic activity in the receiving society, almost all of that increased activity go to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits. The gain to natives is tiny…

Moreover, this tiny economic benefit was entirely erased by the fiscal drain immigrant households imposed on taxpayers. Perhaps worst of all, the researchers found that to generate this small gain, immigration reduced the wages of the least educated and poorest American workers.

When will the Pro- Immigration fanatics at The Wall Street Journal show similar fairness?

Ratner On the Ropes?

2008-09-10T10:50:00.004-05:00

let's hope!, though he manages to slime through worse, courtesy of the taxpayer... from DDDB:Atlantic Yards: The Deal is Coming Undone

The New York Times reports that developer Bruce Ratner's stated Atlantic Yards groundbreaking date is a fantasy given numerous financial and legal obstacles. Despite the rather misleading headline,the Atlantic Yards deal is coming undone.

Three key issues are spread throughout the article.

The first is that the $400 million naming rights deal with Barclays Bank has a contract that requires "Forest City to close on the land and the financing by the end of November." As DDDB spokesman Daniel Goldstein states in the article, it is impossible for Forest city to close by that date. (Amongst other major financing and legal problems for Ratner, there is an eminent domain legal challenge in NY State Court that won't even be argued until 2009.)

It is confirmed that Ratner is actively seeking $100 million more in taxpayer subsidies. This is going to be unacceptable to nearly all local elected officials.

Congressman Kucinich's probe into IRS tax exempt bond regulations (a Congressional hearing on "Gaming the Tax Code: Public Subsidies, Private Profits, and Big League Sports in New York" is scheduled for September 18th) is breathing down Ratner's neck and jeopardizing his ability to gain those tax-exempt bonds.

The Atlantic Yards project is hanging by a thread, yet Ratner continues to demolish a whole section of Prospect Heights and spend taxpayer dollars on project-specific infrastructure work. It's time for that to stop. It's time to move forward with a new feasible and superior vision to develop the rail yards

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I still wonder, out loud why there has been no investigation of Ratner's undo influence. Like Iraq debacle or Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, he might be so woven into the system that he's 'too big to fail'...or be prosecuted.

5 Myths About Those Civic-Minded, Deeply Informed Voters

2008-09-10T10:50:00.001-05:00

5 Myths About Those Civic-Minded, Deeply Informed Voters

By Rick Shenkman
Sunday, September 7, 2008; B05

One thing both Democrats and Republicans agreed about in their vastly different conventions: The American voter will not only decide but decide wisely. But does the electorate really know what it's talking about? Plenty of things are hurting American democracy -- gridlock, negative campaigning, special interests -- but one factor lies at the root of all the others, and nobody dares to discuss it. American voters, who are hiring the people who'll run a superpower democracy, are grossly ignorant. Here are a few particularly bogus claims about their supposed savvy.

1. Our voters are pretty smart.

You hear this one from politicians all the time, even John McCain, who promises straight talk, and Barack Obama, who claims that he's not a politician (by which he means that he'll tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear). But by every measure social scientists have devised, voters are spectacularly uninformed. They don't follow politics, and they don't know how their government works. According to an August 2006 Zogby poll, only two in five Americans know that we have three branches of government and can name them. A 2006 National Geographic poll showed that six in ten young people (aged 18 to 24) could not find Iraq on the map. The political scientists Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, surveying a wide variety of polls measuring knowledge of history, report that fewer than half of all Americans know who Karl Marx was or which war the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought in. Worse, they found that just 49 percent of Americans know that the only country ever to use a nuclear weapon in a war is their own.

True, many voters can tell you who's ahead and who's behind in the horse race. But most of what they know about the candidates' positions on the issues -- and remember, our candidates are running to make policy, not talk about their biographies -- derives from what voters learn from stupid and often misleading 30-second commercials, according toKathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

2. Bill O'Reilly's viewers are dumber than Jon Stewart's.

Liberals wish. Democrats like to think that voters who sympathize with their views are smarter than those who vote Republican. But a 2007 Pew survey found that the knowledge level of viewers of the right-wing, blustery "The O'Reilly Factor" and the left-wing, snarky "The Daily Show" is comparable, with about 54 percent of the shows' politicized viewers scoring in the "high knowledge" category.

So what about conservative talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh's audience? Surely the ditto-heads are dumb, right? Actually, according to a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Rush's listeners are better educated and "more knowledgeable about politics and social issues" than the average voter.

3. If you just give Americans the facts, they'll be able to draw the right conclusions.

Unfortunately, no. Many social scientists have long tried to downplay the ignorance of voters, arguing that the mental "short cuts" voters use to make up for their lack of information work pretty well. But the evidence from the past few years proves that a majority can easily be bamboozled.

Just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after months of unsubtle hinting from Bush administration officials, some 60 percent of Americans had come to believe that Iraq was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, despite the absence of evidence for the claim, according to a series of surveys taken by the PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll. A year later, after the bipartisan, independent 9/11 Commission reported that Saddam Hussein had had nothing to do with al-Qaeda's assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 50 percent of Americans still insisted that he did. In other words, the public was bluntly given the data by a group of officials generally believed to be credible -- and it still didn't absorb the most basic facts about the most important event of their time.

4. Voters today are smarter than they used to be.

Actually, by most measures, voters today possess the same level of political knowledge as their parents and grandparents, and in some categories, they score lower. In the 1950s, only 10 percent of voters were incapable of citing any ways in which the two major parties differed, according to Thomas E. Patterson of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who leads the Pew-backed Vanishing Voter Project. By the 1970s, that number had jumped to nearly 30 percent.

Here's what makes these numbers deplorable -- and, in fact, almost incomprehensible: Education levels are far higher today than they were half a century ago, when social scientists first began surveying voter knowledge about politics. (In 1940, six in ten Americans hadn't made it past the eighth grade.) The moral of this story: Schooling alone doesn't translate into better educated voters.

5. Young voters are paying a lot of attention to the news.

Again, no. Despite all the hoopla about young voters -- the great hope of the future! -- only one news story in 2001 drew the attention of a majority of them: 9/11. Some 60 percent of young voters told Pew researchers that they were following news about the attack closely. (Er -- 40 percent weren't?) But none of the other stories that year seemed particularly interesting to them. Only 32 percent said that they followed the news about the anthrax attacks or the economy, then in recession. The capture of Kabul from the Taliban? Just 20 percent.

Six years later, Pew again measured public knowledge of current events and found that the young (aged 18 to 29) "know the least." A majority of young respondents scored in the "low knowledge" category -- the only demographic group to do so.

And some other statistics are even more alarming. How many young people read newspapers? Just 20 percent. (Worse, studies consistently show that people who do not pick up the newspaper-reading habit in their 20s rarely do so later.) But surely today's youth are getting their news from the Internet? Sorry. Only 11 percent of the young report that they regularly surf the Internet for news. Maybe Obama shouldn't be relying on savvy young voters after all.

rick@howstupidblog.com

Rick Shenkman is an associate professor of history at George Mason University and the author of "Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter

Steve Sailer's Letter To Obama

2008-09-10T10:49:00.001-05:00

Dear Sen. Obama: Don't try to sound folksy

Obama's "lipstick on a pig" blunder is a reminder that he needs to hire a jokewriter so he can poke some much-needed fun at himself. Over the last dozen days, the whole race has wandered off into old-fashioned American comedy (what could Frank Capra have done with a Sarah Palin character?), leaving the new-fangled Obama rattled.

Jeez, when somebody makes a joke about the the stupid job you had when you were in your 20s, you make a joke back. You don't get all hurt, peeved, and self-righteous like Obama did about Palin's little "community organizer" witticism. Maybe his "lipstick" line wasn't aimed at Palin, but he ought to have expected that everybody would take it that way by now.

Obama's Achilles heel has always been that his gimlet-eyed appraisal of human beings doesn't extend to himself -- he can't keep from feeling sorry for himself. It seems like a hundred years ago that I called Obama "a close student of other people’s weaknesses, a literary artist of considerable power in plumbing his deep reservoirs of self-pity and resentment, an unfunny Evelyn Waugh..." (Waugh could never stop feeling sorry for himself that he was born into a merely affluent, respectable family rather than a rich, aristocratic one. Obama's sad "story of race and inheritance" is more complicated, but still rather similar.)

That's why Dreams from My Father reads like the Brideshead Revisited of law school application essays.

The GOP brain trust (if such an oxymoronic body exists) will sooner or later figure that out and try to spend the rest of the campaign poking and prodding Obama's delicate self-image to see what happens.

In one of his half-brilliant, half-wrongheaded insights, Spengler suggests:

"Combine a child's response to serial abandonment with the perspective of an outsider, and Obama became an alien species against which American politics had no natural defenses. He is a Third World anthropologist profiling Americans, in but not of the American system."

Sometimes, Obama reminds me of the persona Christian Lander invented for the narrator of Stuff White People Like: the mild-mannered but cold-blooded interloping observer/exploiter of upper-middle class Americans' self-delusions and status anxieties. (Perhaps Lander had Obama in mind?) Those traits can take you a long way, but Obama may have to show a little more to go all the way.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Anarcho-tyranny

2008-09-10T10:35:00.001-05:00

From wikipedia:

Anarcho-tyranny

Samuel Francis argued that the problems of managerial state extend to issues of crime and justice. In 1992, he introduced the word “anarcho-tyranny” into the paleocon vocabulary.[28] He once defined it this way: “we refuse to control real criminals (that's the anarchy) so we control the innocent (that's the tyranny).”[29]

In one of his last essays, he explained the concept:

What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny—the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through “sensitivity training” and multiculturalist curricula, “hate crime” laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.[30]

Francis argues that this situation extends across the U.S. and Europe. While the government functions normally, violent crime remains a constant, creating a climate of fear (anarchy). He says that “laws that are supposed to protect ordinary citizens against ordinary criminals” routinely go unenforced, even though the state is “perfectly capable” of doing so. While this problem rages on, government elites concentrate their interests on law-abiding citizens. In fact, Middle America winds up on the receiving end of both anarchy and tyranny.[31]

The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites … or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and “pathological” elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms—people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible—not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations.[32]

Francis argued that anarcho-tyranny is built into the managerial system and cannot be solved simply by fighting corruption or voting out incumbents. In fact, he says that the system generates a false “conservatism” that encourages people to act passively in the face of perpetual revolution. He concludes that only by devolving power back toward law-abiding citizens can sanity be restored. [33]

Diverstiy Comes to Spain.

2008-09-10T10:28:00.003-05:00

bbc:
.Spain struggles with race riots

Protesters blocked streets with burning barricades

Riot police in Spain have again clashed with hundreds of protesters on the third consecutive day of violence directed against immigrants from North Africa. .

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Notice the bbc's wording? North African's are the 'victims'?! Spanish reacting to unwanted mass numbers of immigrants, many of whom rape white women (and specifically, white women) create choas and violence..yet the Spanish citizen, betrayed by his government and the EU, is the 'criminal'. I think "anarcho-tyranny" is going to become a much-used word in Europe and North America.

Symbolism @ The Olympics...

2008-08-26T12:27:00.005-05:00

Robert Spencer looks at the Closing Olympic Ceremonies.....

From Takimag:

......It’s also worth noting that when the city of London made its little “Cool Britainia” contribution to the closing ceremonies, it offered no gestures towards the glories of British history, but instead presented a bunch of brightly dressed hipsters doing a completely stupid dance while waiting for a bus.

Each ethnic group in multi-culti London got full representation—there was even a guy in a wheelchair! I was waiting for one dancer to depict the Islamicist Imam with ties to al-Queda who’s received official “refugee” status and is on public welfare. But then it’s also important to note that London didn’t find it fit to include a cockney among the dancers, nor a dandy, nor a working-class 5-pint-a-day guy, nor an aristocrat, nor a soccer hooligan, nor a tweed-clad Oxford Don—that is, all the colorful figures that make Britain British (or at least in this American’s imagination). Instead, on display was the Benetton world—one in which everyone is young and attractive, dresses in the same fashionable way, thinks the same tolerant thoughts, and differs only in skin tone. While China might have given us a mass, London offered nothing but conformist individuals. When the bus door opened and a little Indian girl popped out representing “London,” who was then handed a symbolic soccer ball by a Malaysian girl depicting “the children of the world,” I reached for the barf bag.

The Beijing Olympics was about triumphant nationalism, a people with that “rising feeling,” who see that their day is almost here. The London games, on the other hand, will offer us lots of images of global nowhere-ness and reminders of just how much the British nation is in decline.

..............................................................
One commentator brilliantly sums it up:

Just can’t help a bit of schadenfreude that the downside of multiculturalism is finally washing over Britain like stagnant sewage overflows a gutter. The jump in streetcorner knifings and muggings must give pause even to the most enthusiastic believer dazzled with the dangerous delusion that filling Britain with colorful vagrants is the best thing to happen to the island since the Venerable Bede. Multiculturalist fanatics (no other term suffices) seem to hang on the legs of everyone not British, begging that they not be considered (gasp!) racist. They deserve the contempt they attract - although not to the point of suffering their folly exploding in their faces, as it did three years ago.
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The Chinese aren't shy about commenting:

It went on: "Unlike the Chinese custom, which tends not to reveal their weakness to the outsiders, the British seem to like to laugh about their stupidity in a funny way.

"During the performance, when the London bus pulled over, all the passengers waiting for the bus rushed into the door at the same time, which truly damaged the 'British image'."

Another newspaper, Daily First, commented that the London performance was "casual" and "beyond our understanding"

The Founder of "Earth Day" Speaks:

2008-08-26T12:13:00.001-05:00

Q. What is the number one environmental problem facing the earth today?

A. If you had to choose just one, it would have to be population. . . . The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become. . . . We have to address the population issue. The United Nations, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population. It can be done. But in this country, it's phony to say "I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration." It's just a fact that we can't take all the people who want to come here. And you don't have to be a racist to realize that. However, the subject has been driven out of public discussion because everybody is afraid of being called racist if they say they want any limits on immigration.

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The environment, crime, education....that word 'racist' has been the most potent weapon leftists ever came up with. It has literally wrought more destruction than an atomic bomb.

Tax Payer Funded Anti-Anglo Groups

2008-08-22T12:07:00.001-05:00

from Vdare:

Treason Lobby Tapping Taxpayers For La Raza

By Marcus Epstein

Last week, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann(R-MN) called for Congress to reconvene so it could take out parts of the recent Freddie Mac bailout that give $500 million in unmarked grants to far-Left “community development” groups, such as the National Council of La Raza.

Bachmann’s stand is symbolic but admirable. The Treason Lobby’s tentacles are reaching out to seize the American taxpayer.

When the bailout bill was passed at the end of July, there was little public comment on the money going to La Raza. However, it’s not the first time they’ve tried this stunt. In May, Congressman Barney Frank earmarked $15 million to La Raza in his Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention Act of 2008. The bill was killed—but a number of people on the Hill have told me that they expect La Raza to end up with even more money in the act that subsequently passed.

To put this grant in perspective: even $15 million dollars is greater than the total assets of the three biggest immigration control groups—Numbers USA, The Center for Immigration Studies, and The Federation for American Immigration Reform—combined.

It’s not as if La Raza needs taxpayer money. It currently has over $100 million dollars in assets, along with its Raza Development Fund, their “community development lending arm” that has another 53 million. This is before they got their housing bailout money, along with $1.3 million dollars it got from HUD earlier this year, and $16 million dollars that The Wachovia Foundation, associated with the Wachovia Corporation bank, pledged to them in June.

Occasionally I get a call from supporters who suggest we organize a boycott of different companies that contribute to La Raza. The name I hear most is State Farm Insurance.

I tell them that as much I’d love to boycott them, right now there is pretty much nowhere to go. I looked up the sponsors La Raza’s last annual conference—there were over 200 of them—and just about every major insurance company was there including, Aetna, Nationwide, Geico, Sharp Healthcare, and Prudential! In addition there were over two dozen government and military agencies; the Republican Party (!); and, most shockingly, a number of charities. The March of Dimes, Foundation for the Advancement in Cancer Research, National Eye Institute, and Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and Paralysis Resource Center all were sponsors of the conference.

Many of these organizations will no doubt claim that their sponsorship was used for the purpose of recruiting affirmative action hires—not that it makes it any better. The government will insist that the money given to La Raza is given for specific projects like setting up Spanish Language Charter Schools or giving housing assistance to illegal aliens. Again, not like it makes it any better.

Besides, all funds are fungible.

So before La Raza get new grants, voters, consumers, and donors should ask what exactly La Raza is doing with this money from the U.S. taxpayer, big business, and the March of Dimes?

One of its major projects is a new website called “We Can Stop the Hate” designed to blacklist anyone who opposes their agenda. According to the New York Times, La Raza wants to silence haters “even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights”. La Raza’s president Janet Murguia justifies this because

“Everyone knows there is a line sometimes that can be crossed when it comes to free speech. And when free speech transforms into hate speech, we’ve got to draw that line.” [ A Call to End Hate Speech, By Ariel Alexovich, February 1, 2008]

So who has crossed the line? La Raza’s main institutional targets are the aforementioned immigration control groups: FAIR, CIS, and Numbers USA. Astonishingly, La Raza’s mode of attack is to go after them for their source of funding.

We Can Stop the Hate recently posted a YouTube video which opens with an ominous score and text asking “what if all the leading anti immigration groups...were founded by the same man…funded by the same organization…and have ties to white supremacy?” The video proceeds to the lovely Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center (which, by the way, has assets exceeding $219 million) who suggests that all the organizations are both funded and controlled by…Dr. John Tanton!

Of course, Beirich does not quote a single word from any member of the organization saying anything “racist”. In fact, she actually claims the lack of overt “hate speech” is what makes them so dangerous. Their whole purpose, she says, is “to present a moderate face that is disconnected from [the extremists], but in reality isn’t.”

So for La Raza and the SPLC, the line between “free speech” and “hate speech” is crossed before opponents of mass immigration even open their mouths.

As for Dr. Tanton, he deserves a great deal of credit for helping out fledging immigration reform groups. But he is not even close to being the main benefactor of any of the groups, and isn’t associated with any besides FAIR. Furthermore, far from being a right wing extremist, he is a conservationist concerned with sustainable growth. (Which is why he is attacked by writers like Jason Riley in the Wall Street Journal as a liberal population controller.)

As frustrating as these baseless smear attacks may be, they should be heartening to patriotic immigration reformers. With a little bit of money, groups like FAIR, CIS, and Numbers USA, along with groups with even less money like VDARE.COM, have managed to halt the agenda of La Raza and many other organizations with income and endowments in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Imagine what we could do with a little bit more!

...............
Get it, my tax dollars are funding a radical group that wants to censor and margainlize me... Why? Why Fund this group and not say a white activist group? What is going on here? Why is this happening.

Well, Of Course...

2008-08-22T09:08:00.007-05:00

of COURSE there is covert racism in US olmpic team uniforms...who could have imagined otherwise?

From Newsweek:

The biggest sports-related news stateside has been the redesign of the U.S. uniforms by Ralph Lauren, ...... However, the WASP aesthetic he sells—think of characters from "The Great Gatsby," clothed in tennis whites and delicate tea dresses—has come to represent a classist and racist set of ideals, hardly representative of the current multicultural social fabric of the United States........ The issue is that the Polo brand is built upon an aesthetic intended to communicate to the world, the wearer's successful assimilation into the traditional institutions of upwardly-mobile American culture—the elitist world of typically WASP-only country clubs, prep schools and cotillions.

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Frankly, I am tired of this shit....
"Sameer Reddy" - can come to this country or his parents can- and start to lecture me about racism from a major media company like newsweek which is backed by big multinational corporations who advertise there. How much clearer does it have to be? Big companies and big ethnic blocks are using white guilt tripping to marginalize us to the point where we are supposed to feel guilty about blue blazers on the olympic team.

I do not doubt, for a moment, what Sameer's real motivations are: building power for his own ethnic group. Anyone white still supporting multiculturalism is a naive fool, or, quite well paid.

As a side note. I have never liked Ralph Lauren. I can claim some Anglo-Saxon Protestant "pedigree", and, personally, I have found his contrived meaningless logos over the top, not to mention, too expensive. Give me Jpress or Brooks Brothers, or logo-less LLBean and I am happy. But I might just mosey on down and buy some of Ralph Libshitz's clothing...the remote chance that it might remind "reddy" of WASP imperial domination makes me feel - I was going to say warm and fuzzy, but no it just feels really good.... Side note, one does have to ask, what's the purpose of the Onion anymore?

Crime Wave In Brooklyn...

2008-08-21T10:10:00.004-05:00

With my merciless un-pc commentary in blue:

No Offense

As anyone can see (or read, or experience), crime is up in Brooklyn, and in our humble opinion, it’s as much to do with the poor economy as poor judgment. [hold on...its the victim's fault? for not being more careful. A poor economy is a poor excuse since it hardly has to do with people robbing so they can eat] Clearly no amount of advice will get you out of every bad situation, but local experts gave us tips that could stop you from being such an easy mark. Some seem obvious, yet judging from recent crime reports, they’re worth repeating.

Watch Your Stuff and Lock Your Doors
Brooklyn Paper senior reporter Mike McLaughlin learns about countless people who leave their bags unattended in restaurants or bars — only to later report them stolen. “We very rarely put it in the police blotter because it’s so pervasive and so easy to prevent,” he says. Other common crimes of opportunity he uncovers: people who are robbed because they leave their apartment doors unlocked (see “Lots of Breaks”), the windows leading to their fire escape open (see “Big Burgs”), or anything of value in their cars (see “Bad Directions”). “I would assume most people kick themselves after something like that.”

Don’t Be So Cynical
To combat the crime spike in Clinton Hill, Councilwoman Letitia James helped spearhead a public safety task force with area groups like The Society for Clinton Hill, which created an incident map that anyone can post to (here>>). Involving the neighborhood is an ingenious solution to the lack of response from the 88th Precinct – but if more people reported muggings and robberies,* the NYPD wouldn’t be able to claim that crime is down, and would be duty-bound to put more cops on the street. “People don’t report crimes because they don’t think anything will be done,” she says. “Cynicism is my greatest enemy.”

Be Alert and Don’t Flaunt Your Gizmos
James also notes that most of the muggers are “victimizing folks who are texting and playing with their camera” while walking down the street. In other words, easy, oblivious targets who can’t hear a thing because their iPod is too loud. Maybe everyone has an iPhone now, but keep it in your pocket on the street and you’re less likely to have it swiped.

Trust Your Gut
Susan Moesker, who teaches her students to trust their instincts at the Center for Anti-Violence Education (CAE) in Park Slope, ignored her own advice one day. When walking past a group of teenage kids in Prospect Park, [hmm were they white, chinese, Jews? Irish Catholic? when the description is glossed over like this its a fair bet they were black...if we won't acknowledge a chronic crime problem among black youth how can we fix it?? ]she thought to herself, “They should really be in school,” then convinced herself it was none of her business. Seconds later, they’d surrounded her and pulled their switchblades out, demanding her money. She got out of the situation unharmed, but the moral is that if a group or person strikes you as threatening or out of the ordinary, cross the street or walk away.[the other moral of the story here is that no one has the 'guts' to admit that part of the gut instinct is profiling. Do I 'profile' or worry when I see black kids coming out of the 7th day adeventist church, in suits and ties? or course not. Hanging out in prospect park, unsupervised, during school hours? you bet. Would I do the same if I saw Chinese kids, or Hasidic Jews? Nope. Of course, Brooklybased and other magazines and newspapers are so PC they will withhold information that could save people's lives.]

Yell Like Hell
Use your voice — it doubles as a weapon. “When you release a yell while doing a physical technique, it makes it 15 percent stronger; that’s why people yell while breaking boards in karate,” says Moesker. Yelling will also catch a mugger off guard. That’s what yours truly did in May when a guy tried to steal my purse in Fort Greene, and the shocked expression on his face was priceless. “Attackers don’t expect resistance,” says Moesker, “especially not from women.”

(The CAE has a wealth of other useful tips, which it gives to students of its classes>>)

* We have heard about cops who try to talk you out of reporting a crime, either to keep their precinct’s stats down, or avoid the paperwork. Don’t let them.
[part of Bloombergs' cook the books strategy]

Sent by Nicole.

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I guess Clinton Hill is now 'blighted'.

What WON'T Change if Obama is Elected...

2008-08-21T09:26:00.002-05:00

in fact, will get worse. Many liberals, and even fed up Republicans, think Obama will bring 'change'. Here are some things I predict that if this man is elected will not only not change, but get worse:

a. The Patriot Act: ADemocratic controlled Congress, Senate and Executive will turn the patriot act on the right - marginalizing far right groups - prosecuting and jailing them as 'terrorists' in a hope to exert pressure on any vestiges of national identity or nationalism - since this will be painted in the papers as going after 'racist terrorists' the left and dailykos types liberals won't give much of a damn.

b. Iraq/Middle East policy: The American Conservative is the only publication I know who has pointed out that Obama will expand the 'crusade' for democracy' into Africa and other politically correct parts of the world. (we will of course avoid the issue with our main banker, China). Anyone who knows anything about Afghanistan, going back to the "Great Game" days knows Obama's strategy won't work - and I don't think he has any intention of carrying it out..I think he will hand over, or already has handed over, middle east policy to the Jewish 'left' as opposed to the Neoconservative Jewish right...the end result won't be much different - we will bomb Iran, continue to ignore Israel's mistreatment and land grab of the West Bank and continue to shield Israel from scrutiny - which is one of the root causes of our problems.

c. Fiscal constraint. Obama's is raking in money, overwhelmingly, from Wall Street...'nough said. It will be like the Clinton years- policies which the papers and media will rave about but middle class and middle america will continue to be displaced - but this 'story' won't be mentioned or discussed in national media - only about fake bubble prosperity in which Wall Street, Lawyers and a few others profit. Our core strength and core economy will continue to rot.

d. Immigration. He already said he has no intention of doing a thing about it and he wants to provide amnesty to 10 million illegals - thus encouraging yet more to come -

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Would McCain do any better? Honestly, he'd be worse on some. Its death by hanging or death by shooting.

Strategic Investing With the State of New York II

2008-08-21T09:19:00.003-05:00

a flurry of articles from nolandgrab about Ratner's securing financing of 80 Dekalb, and of course, nails it:

Ratner announces financing for 80 DeKalb

MarketWatch.com, Forest City Closes $167 Million Financing for Downtown Brooklyn Residential Building

The full press release from Forest City Ratner announces that the company "has closed on $167 million in construction financing for 80 DeKalb, a 335,000-square-foot residential building on DeKalb Avenue in downtown Brooklyn."

The Real Estate Observer, New Glassy Tower to Join Fort Greene Mini-City

The glass building will join the Forte Condo (at Ashland Place and Fulton Street), and the soon-to-be-built Danspace project across the street to form a small mini-city on the edge of Fort Greene, bordering Downtown Brooklyn -- but a taste of the 16-skyscraper-and-arena Atlantic Yards complex to come.
...
[A]ccording to the release.
"The New York State Housing Finance Agency selected 80 DeKalb to receive $109.5 million in tax-exempt bonds and $27.5 million in taxable bonds. The lending institutions involved in the transaction were Wachovia Bank, N.A., and Helaba (both co-agents providing the credit enhancement to the $137 million in bonds issued by HFA), as well as the National Electrical Benefit Fund, which provided a $10 million mezzanine loan and $20 million of credit enhancement."
Boring as that might seem, it's an achievement to get that sort of financing in this market, in which many of the Wall Street shops have stopped lending, and borrowers are forced to approach more traditional, and more conservative, balance sheet lenders.

NoLandGrab: It's less of an achievement when the state housing authority is backing most of the bonds. Also, the word on the street is that Ratner had to get the bonds from the State because the City of New York is more inclined to provide tax-exempt bond-financing for projects with a higher component of affordable units (50/30/20).

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Funding Set For Ratner’s First Brooklyn Apt. Building

Unlike most 80/20 developments, 80 DeKalb will remain affordable for 99 years, according to Ratner. For the initial 35 years, 62 affordable units will be made available for households earning up to 50 percent of the area median income (AMI) and 11 units for households with incomes up to 40 percent of AMI. For the remaining years, all of the affordable units will be made available for households earning up to 90 percent of AMI.

NoLandGrab: For those trying to wrap your head around all of the fanfare, this means that after 35 years the income-ceiling for applicants for the "affordable units" will be raised for the remainder of the program. Bottom line, it's less affordability for the long term.

The Brooklyn Paper, Ratner’s first tenants

This head-scratching explanation is probably our favorite bit of spin of day:

Some critics have argued that state affordable housing bonds are too generous. Indeed, the state’s $109.5-million tax-free financing will create just 73 afforable units — a cost of $1.5 million per apartment.
But a spokesman for the Housing Finance Agency said such back-of-the-envelope calculations miss the larger point.
“We don’t finance only the affordable units in a building; we finance the entire building because the developer has committed to having affordable units in it,” said the spokesman, Phil Lentz. “So our contribution is actually $300,000 per unit. We don’t finance buildings that are exclusively market rate.”

NoLandGrab: So NY State justifies its generosity by reminding taxpayers that we are not only helping to finance the affordable units but the market-rate units too!?!

One other note: Chuck Ratner got it right in the press release where he stated, "It's also a tribute to our New York team and the relationships they have built in both the public-sector and private-sector financing community." Though this deal closed in a shaky lending environment, the backbone of the deal, the state-backed tax-exempt financing, couldn't have happened without the Ratners' deep political ties.

Posted by lumi at August 21, 2008 5:09 AM | Permalink

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In the midst of a collapsing real estate market and recession the state backs bonds (thus guaranteeing them) for luxury condos....could the state be more foolish? Its a manifestation of what I have repeatedly said here- Ratner's 'ties' to the state are deep, deep corruption so pervasive and widespread, that Tammany Hall looks like good goverment. The Ratners are thieves and crooks - stealing land (literally in the case of eminent domain) and tax payer dollars - at the time when middle class tax payers face increases, the poor cuts in services - the Ratners are greedily feeding from the trow, apparently oblivious to economic conditions...why? It can't be because it makes good fiscal sense for the state, because it doesn't. We know its not even to provide low income housing, because it does not....so why in the name of common sense and decency would the state be backing the Ratners building luxury condos in a downturned market. Corruption, Greed. The New York Times refuses to look into it - because they are part the corruption - the Daily News refuses to because Zuckerman is part of the corruption...the state won't because they are part of the corruption..as pakati and Patterson proved - on both sides of the aisle...at this point we can only hope for yet another federal investigation of the Ratners.

Corruption Praises Greed....

2008-08-20T22:13:00.004-05:00

Silver Praises Ratner

Wonder what sort of over the top praise one can get from a $58,420 contribution to Sheldon Silver's Democratic Assembly Campaign Commitee slush fund? Here's Silver at an awards dinner for Bruce Ratner (the source of that $58,420 in January):

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I guess all we need now is an editorial from Mort Zuckerman's Daily News saying "see, politicians agree Ratner's a great guy and AY is a great project"

I find it interesting that so many politicians would line up to praise Ratner and as they get higher on the rings of power they drop their anti-eminent domain abuse, anti-corruption stances and praise Ratner's project (patternson and anthony wiener come to mind) to me its a clear indication that the corruption is that the highest levels of New York State politics and that the media is not only complacent but a willing particpant. I would go as far to say that the situation is worse than Tammany Hall, and probably quietly and firmly run by a small clique of oligarch families - which include Ratner.

If Barclays Center gets built, how long before it's obsolete?

2008-08-19T10:32:00.002-05:00

from AYR:

[

If Barclays Center gets built, how long before it's obsolete?

This is the seventh of a multi-part interview (conducted May 28) with Neil deMause, the Brooklyn-based co-author of the book Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit, and writer of the companion web site. He testified at a 3/29/07 Congressional hearing that questioned taxpayer financing of stadiums, convention centers, and hotels.

Q. Economist Mark Rosentraub, in your book, says something like, if you’re not prepared for major changes in your sports facility by its second decade, you’re being pollyanish. Let’s say Frank Gehry’s designing the best arena of its time. How long would it last before it needs to be reworked?

A. Well, [Seattle's] Key Arena was rebuilt in '94; now the Sonics are trying to move to Oklahoma City, that’s 14 years. [They have since gotten the OK to move.]

It depends on what you mean by reworked--torn down and rebuilt, or have some new things added? I think there will always be new technology that teams want, or new things that someone else will come up with and will make more revenue, and they’ll say, we need some of those too, the question is what you can retrofit, how much it costs and who pays for it.

At one point, I asked that to Rod Fort, an economist at the University of Michigan. His response was, Well, from the perspective of the owner, if you’re not paying for it, I don’t see anything wrong with a new arena every year.
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not only is Ratner 'not paying for it' he is profitting, enormously directly from the public coffers...What will happen to the 'old' barclays's center it will become the eyesore that most of us already know it is on paper...lets not forget that its sold by hucksters like Markowitz as cutting edge Frank Gehery design...first of all, Gehery the architect of the global elite - is an dinosaur - designing wasteful, non functional, fluff that has become the 'brand' of global corporations - but like much fashionable things will look horrible when it becomes dated..and if the main selling point of the building is that it is cutting edge design, that value diminishes the day its completed...

If Ratner is not investigated, and maintains his corrupt influence on government, I do not doubt that he will ask for a new stadium in 10 years and line up politicians to once again raid the public coffers. Prospect Heights will be left with an enormous neigborhood busting eyesore...

Its Starting to Feel LIke 1789 Around Here....

2008-08-19T10:27:00.003-05:00

Obama laid it on thick in the traditional sycophantic way:

Obama told the group–which included many Indian and Pakistani immigrants–that he is not only familiar with their cultures–but also proud of his lifelong association with them.
“Not only do I think I’m a desi, but I’m a desi,” he said, using a colloquial term that describes South Asian immigrants.

To applause, he said he became an expert at cooking dal and other ethnic dishes, though “somebody else made the naan,” the trademark Indian bread.

“I have an enormous personal affection for the people of South Asia.”

A thought experiment: Will one day Obama tell white America how much “enormous personal affection” he has for the people who built the society and (misguidedly) established Affirmative Action without which he would be nobody?[i think we know the answer to that...we're bitter, typical white people, afraid of immigrants and clinging to our guns and bibles]

Of course, most politicians will make spectacles of themselves in the presence of rich donors. The question is, why does this notoriously rich and entrepreneurial immigrant minority display such enthusiasm for this socialist mongrel?

Could it be that color–anti white hostility–transcends economics?[yes, yes yes... both Asian and South Asian PACs, despite being enormously successful, are engaging in identity politics that are inevitably are anti-white, and in the case of South Asians, anti-Anglo..].

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While I don't want and/or welcome Balkanization and ethinic conflict it is obvious that is what is going on...whites are much like Royalists pre-1789...continuously giving up power and trying to show they are 'authentically' revolutionary which my might temporarily abate tension but in the end, make things much much worse.

Asians, particularly Chinese now see better fortunes sticking together and alleing with the Dragon than the assimilating... they have the clout, cash and clever use of guilt tripping whites with charges of racism (funny coming from Han chinese who are among the most ethnocentric people on the planet) they can gain alot more for themselves....meanwhile most whites are giving away their land (and power) the nature conservancy, fretting over whale populations and 'ending racism' to preoccupied or in active avoidance of reality ...that we can very well have Rhodesia to Zimbawae (or Yuglslavia to Serb-Croat, take your pick) like deterioration in this country within decades.

More Non-News...

2008-08-18T10:31:00.004-05:00

AP photo of school register reveals "Barry Soetoro" as a Muslim Indonesian

A 2007 Associated Press photograph, suppressed until now, shows the school register of the child who is today known as Barack Hussein Obama but was officially listed then as Barry Soetoro, whose citizenship was listed as "Indonesian" and whose religion was listed as "Islam." The visual evidence starkly contradicts the Obama campaign's claim that he was not a Muslim and confirms that he is a national of at least one other country.

In addition, it raises the highly problematic issue of what is Obama's official name. If it turns out to Barry Soetoro, and no official change of name was ever made, Obama may face an array of charges of deception and misprision that may throw into doubt, at the very least, his fitness to run.

Deep doubts remain about the veracity of the "certificate of live birth" image produced for his campaign by the radical left-wing Daily Kos blog. There are reports that investigative teams -- from the Republican and Democratic parties as well as various intelligence agencies -- are seeking out the details of his murky childhood from Kenya to Indonesia. There are indications of growing disquiet in the circles of power that the so-called "smears" may have understated the gravity of the candidate's identity problem: he may not be American, he was not raised Christian and, it appears, he was not Barack Hussein Obama.

The evidence of the candidate's un-American, un-Christian upbringing is nothing new, and has been documented by bloggers as early as 2007 and by Israel Insider in our very first report on this subject in June of this year. But until now the photograph of his school record has been lacking. The image is dated from 2007 and was apparently taken to accompany an AP article that appeared in January of that year. Ironically, that article was about how Obama was rejecting the untrue charge that the public school he attended was a radical Indonesian madrassa.

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I have a more of a problem with his dual citizenship than his muslim upbringing since, it doesnt' seem to matter what religion he is- as long as it is anti-western, anti-white....

Why is the press avoiding this? Why is the New York Times? Because Obama represents their 'dream' come true the symbolic and real displacement of Anglo-Saxon America and the marginalization of "anglo-protestant core" that Samuel Huntington warned us about (Huntington was right everywhere the neocons were wrong - when they said 'the end of history' he said 'the clash of civilizations'). Government is the result of culture, it cannot exist in its present form if the culture and people are changed..that, of course, is the point....

..This has been the 'dream' of radical left since they set foot on our shores...and, they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.. America is finished. I do not think that the constitution (already pretty much disregarded by the right and left) will last my lifetime. One or two self indulgent stupid generations is all it takes to wipe out centuries of progress.

Best Olympics Quote Yet

2008-08-18T10:29:00.001-05:00

Sex and the springboard

Just managed to catch another round of the synchrinised diving. It was the springboard today, and the British pair, Nicholas Robinson-Baker and Benjamin Swain, were doing their stuff. Their achievement was, it must be said, in reaching the final. Theirs is a sport not without beauty, but it always seems to have a homoerotic whiff about it as well. It all looks like a wonderfully elegant gay suicide pact.

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