A Touch Of Class

You can tell the Democrats won the election because there has not been a single complaint about disenfranchised voters or voting machines. Despite their army of lawyers throughout the nation they did not file a single complaint after almost a year's worth of creating the environment to make such a contention possible. After two tumultuous elections in which democrats filed hundreds of complaints and used those to declare George W. Bush an illegitimate President, this year's elections did not elicit a single one. Over the last eight years the constant refrain about the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004 permitted the press to pound the President almost every day until his popularity was driven so low that he was never able to recover. Either the Democrats now have cheating down to an art form or these issues never really existed or both. You be the judge. You can also tell the Democrats won by the class shown by Republicans who despite their opposition to Obama are willing to give him a chance. Something the Democrats never gave to George Bush. Republicans seem willing to wait on his action to make any judgments about his policies. Even the President showed a great deal of class when he acknowledged Obama's victory and promised a smooth transition. Let's hope some of it rubs off.

Obama the First

The pretensions of the man that has ascended to the Presidency cannot be overstated. He began his victory clothed in the colors of black power. Like the ersatz presidential seal he used in his campaign, his latest attempt at shallow symbolism was yet another seal that reads Office of the President Elect. In his first press conference he was surrounded by adoring, fawning white men who are so over the hill it puts the lie to his entire hip and new campaign. Among the things he promised to address as President is the conflict concerning Iran's nuclear program. To be precise he said he would begin a new intense diplomatic effort with Iran. Where has he been? The world, as represented by the UN, as well as individual nations including the United States have been having an intense dialogue with Iran for more than a decade on this very topic. Something the press failed to point out during the entire election season. However, Iran's intransigence on the matter of nuclear might is unambiguous. It has lead to recriminations by many nations including sanctions, but every effort has so far failed to deter Iran’s belligerence. The other thing he promised to address immediately upon taking office in January is the economic crisis. In case he hasn't heard the government has already promised over a billion dollars to deal with the current situation. Actually if you include the $300 billion that the Congress appropriated for troubled mortgages in July of 2008 it’s almost $1.3 billion. He voted for both. Oh, on second thought he missed the July vote. He was too busy running for President. Now that he will take of the oath of office in January he will have to do the work. There will no voting present or not showing up. There will be no blaming the other guy. There will be no excuses. Unlike the Democrats who never accepted George Bush as President, Republicans for the most part will accept Barack Obama and give him a chance to get it right. And while he may continue to escape the scrutiny of the press he will not escape the scrutiny of citizens, both Democratic and Republican.

An Inconvenient Formality

If you've been watching the election coverage you already know that your vote on Tuesday is just an inconvenient exercise for a media that has picked Barack Obama to win the Presidency by a landslide with as many as 370 electoral votes. They have also given the Senate a virtually filibuster-proof majority and the House another 30 seats making the Democrats very close to a two-thirds majority in the House. At the same time they are attempting to cover themselves by saying that the polls have great variability in the event the unthinkable happens. That is, if the Republicans have any success at all in the Presidency, the Senate or the House. It is quite stunning that such an overwhelming victory is being predicted in a country that the media readily admits is basically a 50/50 country. This merely proves that the media is in the tank and they hope to convince you to vote for Obama or stay home. If they succeed we will be treated to a self-fulfilling prophecy, but if we act as Americans normally do the media will be surprised. Americans are being asked to overlook many things to choose Obama and give the Democrats bigger majorities in the House and Senate. In the case of Obama you are being asked to overlook his questionable ties to Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayres, Rashid Khalidi and others. You are also being asked to overlook his failure to provide little more than a doctor's note for a medical record, the lock down of his academic records at Columbia and Harvard and his questionable birth documents. When you raise these issues they are treated as old news or racism. Will this persist if he is President? In the case of the House and Senate you are being asked to overlook an economy that has tanked since the Democrats came into power two years ago, as well as their opposition to the emerging victory in the war in Iraq. In addition, it is widely acknowledged that the current financial meltdown is the direct result of social engineering by the Democrats, as well as questionable accounting procedures by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep the bonuses rolling. It shouldn't be overlooked that George Bush was one of the first to voice his concerns about this as was John McCain and former Treasury Secretary John Snow. Democrats obstructed reform and the result was the mortgage meltdown. Readers of this blog know that John McCain is far from a perfect choice from my perspective. His willingness to betray his party for good media coverage is the mark of a people-pleaser, which is not always the best choice for a President. However, given the choices a vote for McCain is a vote that will give us breathing space until the next election when we may have some better choices.

The Truth About Mortgage Foreclosures

It may come as a surprise to most people, but there is no national database of mortgage foreclosures that permit you to ascertain what the national rate of foreclosure is at any given time. There are a variety of county and state listings but they only reflect local variations in the economic substrate. Looking at the websites of firms such as RealtyTrac, the National Mortgage Association and others the following seems to emerge. Historically the home foreclosure rate has been about 1-percent per year. The delinquency rate has been about 5-percent per year. In 2008, despite all the hype, the financial meltdown and the sub-prime dilemma those rates have not changed significantly. Aside from local jumps in certain regions it is impossible to extrapolate those foreclosures into a national trend. It has been widely reported that 95-pecent of all homeowners are paying their mortgage on time. That is in keeping with what has been a historic trend. It is expected that one million homes will go into foreclosure this year. In a nation where there are 160 millions homes owned by individuals that is less than one percent. So why all the crisis-mongering? Could it be there is money to be made? Examining the websites of credit counselors and bankruptcy lawyers I found the following data. One out of every 114 homes face foreclosure; One out of every 445 homes face foreclosure; One out of every 775 homes face foreclosure. So who's right? If one million homes are foreclosed on in 2008 the percentage will be .00625 of all homes. That is 625 ten-thousandths; a very small number that is just over six-tenths of one percent, and is just over half the national average for the past few decades. I’m not sure on the math here but I think this comes out to 1 out of every 6,250 homes face foreclosure. This is not to say there is not a crisis. There is. Our government is both directly and indirectly responsible for the financial meltdown. There is no doubt that it had many willing partners in the brokerage, banking and mortgage industries, but the social engineering championed by both parties is the root cause. The willingness of those we elect to squander our tax dollars by providing mortgages to people who were not qualified and then to make it worse by permitting bankers to sell them in packages that could not be evaluated has lead us to the situation we are in. Throw the bums out has never had more meaning that it does today. It’s time for American voters to clean House, Senate and the Executive branch.

Don't Let the Mainstream Media Vote for You

During this election cycle things that defy the imagination happen every day in a way that demonstrates the depths to which the mainstream media would like to choose the next President and that man is Barack Obama. If you have any doubt about that you either have not been listening to the news or you have decided that you cannot face the truth. For example if your Chris Matthews of MS-NBC and you keep on insisting your fair, which is clear denial of what has transpired on the Philadelphia-hooker inspired Hardball, you cannot face the truth. If your Campbell Brown of CNN's No Bias, No Bull, and you think you can be fair after having exposed your preference for the Democratic ticket to all but the most dull-witted of human beings, you cannot face the truth either. If you think the line of inquiry to the candidates is equal and probing obviously you can be fooled pretty easy. If you think that ABC, NBC, CBS, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, Newsweek and Time are not in the tank for Obama or covering the election fairly you are living in a fantasy world. I like Democrats that recognize the mainstream media ia an ally. They are at least honest, if nothing else. Over the past few days a few things have stood out. There is a rabid inquiry about how much money Sara Palin's clothes cost, but there is no analysis of her executive experience in relation to other candidates in the race. So the media has proved its tendency for its male reporters to be sexist and its female reporters to engage in cheap green-eyed cat fights. The media also showed their preference when it decided that Joe the Plumber was more dangerous to Barack Obama than Bill Ayres was to the Capitol and the Pentagon. So they tried to discredit Joe. They surrounded his house, ran a background check and tried to paint him a fool, so their light-skinned, nappy-headed pied piper could continue to lead the fools in his sham appearances that are programmed to look spontaneous, but are really staged like a Woodstock concert. Obama supporters are bussed to the rally site. They are given signs and assigned to congregate in groups around news cameras so their orchestrated applause and cheering sounds like a huge cheering crowd. Obama's rallies are not the only thing that is orchestrated. His failure to provide his medical, education and employment data is a serious obstacle that under normal circumstances the media would be demanding full disclosure as they have for John McCain and Sara Palin. Obama's ability to get this far without having provided such information has been orchestrated by a media establishment that is neither interested or even curious about investigating his background, his associations, his activities or even his life. They are content because he is new, shiny and black and they enjoy the possibility of sticking it in your face. They believe you are an antediluvian slug who managed to get the next step of evolution but lack the intellect of real human beings like them. Don’t stay home: Vote.

Powell to the People

Was anybody really surprised that Colin Powell came out in support of Barack Obama? After years of being called a "Tom" and a "house negro" Powell has finally made it back to the Promised Land. Maybe he's angling for a job as Obama's Secretary of State, where he could put into the practice the type of foreign policy he really believes in. After all, when he was Bush's Secretary of State he spent most of his time trying to sabotage the Bush foreign policy, with the exception of the UN speech that ruined Powell in the eyes of the liberals he so admired. Powell proved that Bush's attempt to bring a new bi-partisan tone to Washington was nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of Bush and a sign of weakness to the Democrats who used Bush's naiveté to savage him for eight years running. I hope that if McCain is elected he will not be foolish enough to think that the Democrats will partner with him unless he approves their legislation in total. As was noted in a previous post on all bills in which McCain partnered with Democrats he accepted their legislation in total, while rejecting the views of the Republican Party. Whether you choose McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy or McCain-Lieberman, they were complete concessions to the Democratic view of the world. Colin Powell cemented his betrayal of Bush when Powell's aid Richard Armitage leaked the name of Valerie Plame to the press and stood by while US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, whose desire to get Vice-President Dick Cheney outweighed his sense of justice, continued the prosecution of Scooter Libbey despite knowing the source of the leak. Fitzgerald knew Armitage leaked Valarie Plame's name to the press and Powell's failure to make Armitage go public was the ultimate betrayal of the President by someone he admired and trusted. Despite Powell's view of Obama as a "transitional" candidate the truth is Powell is endorsing Obama simply because he is black and Powell would like to again be in the good graces of the black political structure in America.

ACORN Registrations Must Be Disallowed

Today's decision by the Sixth Circuit, which overturned a decision requiring the Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Bruner to cooperate with local election boards to discover voter fraud, is a slap in the face to all Americans who rely on the legitimacy of the vote on Election Day. If we cannot be sure that the results of an election are honest how can we trust who wins? If government officials condone voter fraud because it is in favor their party we are in trouble. Americans must trust that election officials are honest. We must trust that they will not permit voter fraud or cheating of any kind. The decision of the Sixth Circuit and the actions of the Ohio Secretary of State do not engender the type of trust required, especially since ACORN is being investigated in 13 states for voter fraud. Today in Ohio one witness said ACORN registered him 73 times. The first step required to assure Americans that this election's vote count will be honest is to disallow every single voter registration submitted by ACORN is all fifty states. People who have a legitimate right to vote and registered with ACORN should be able to go to their local precincts and register.