The question too few are asking

Why is it that those in Congress who helped create this financial crisis are not being asked the tough questions?  Instead, we are being subjected to more pontificating by the likes of Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd who, for the last five years, have fought off every attempt to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and dismissed warnings by Bush administration budget officials that this was a ticking time bomb:

It is an affront to the nation that some of the people who brought on the crisis (and financially and politically benefited from the status quo) were asking the questions at the Banking Committee hearing. They should have been in the witness chair.  [Sen.] Dodd said the crisis was “entirely foreseeable and preventable.” Then why didn’t he try to prevent it? He should have been answering questions about the PAC contributions he received from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (according to opensecrets.org, he’s the Senate’s no. 1 recipient of campaign contributions, $133,900, Barack Obama is no. 3, $105,849), his sweetheart Countrywide Financial mortgage rate and whether they influenced his inattentiveness to the growing mortgage crisis.       — Cal Thomas

If anyone should be called to account for this, it is people like Frank and Dodd.  But, no… the MSM will continue to hold them up as “voices of reason” when they created the problem in the first place.  Unbelievable!

More of the same…

…from the great candidate of “postpartisan” and “postracial” politics:  the Obama campaign has now released one of the most vile and misleading racebaiting ads in recent memory.   In Spanish language ads being run in the Southwest, Obama falsely quotes Rush Limbaugh as discussing immigration by saying “stupid and unskilled Mexicans” should “shut their mouth or get out.”  (read the refutation by ABC’s Jake Tapper [no conservative he!!])

Furthermore, anyone who knows anything about the debate over immigration reform knows that McCain and Limbaugh were on opposite sides of that particular issue.  In fact, Rush savaged McCain numerous times over this very issue at the time.

This is definitely in the running for what Powerline has called “the most hateful ad ever?” About the only other one I can recall that comes close is the 2000 ad trying to blame GW Bush for the lynching of a black man in Texas when the perpetrators had already been tried and convicted of the crime.

Whatever happened to the candidate of “hope” who said that cynicism was the greatest problem we faced?  Guess he never really existed, did he?

Don’t want to jinx anything…

…but could this be the year that us long-suffering Cub fans have waited for?  Carlos Zambano’s no hitter coming at this critical point late in the season sure gives some cause for hope. The Cubs have struggled a bit in the past couple weeks and some of us were starting to worry about echoes of 1969. Fortunately, the Brewers haven’t done much better so not much ground has been lost. If Zambrano can get back to his A-game and the others on the pitching staff get healthy, that will go a long way to getting things back on the right track.

As a lifelong Cub fan, this year has brought back a lot of memories of my youth spent at Wrigley. Although the news reports mentioned this no hitter as being the first by a Cub since Milt Pappas in 1971, I was in the stands earlier that same season when Ken Holtzman no hit the Atlanta Braves and the final batter was Hank Aaron. That was one of the most exciting days of my youth.

I just want to live long enough to see the Cubs win the World Series!  100 years is way too long to wait!

LOL

If you like Kilpatrick and Granholm…

To my friends back in Michigan… something to think about:

“If you like what [Gov.] Jennifer Granholm has done for Michigan, you’ll like what Barack Obama is going to do for America,” says Saul Anuzis, the state GOP chairman. “More government programs, higher taxes on business.”

This will be the Republicans’ message in Michigan, not unlike the one adopted by national Democrats at their convention in Denver: Obama is “more of the same.”

Last May, Obama offered now-embarrassing full-throated praise for Kilpatrick at the Detroit Economic Club, providing a convenient audio-visual link between the two men. “He is a leader not just here in Detroit, not just in Michigan, but all across the country,” an exuberant Obama said of Kilpatrick. “We know that he is going to be doing astounding things for many years to come. I am grateful to call him a friend and colleague, and I am looking forward to a lengthy collaboration.” David Fredosso in After Kilpatrick

Obama did finally call for Kilpatrick to resign, but not until Sept. 3 when it had already become abundantly clear that Kilpatrick was toast.  Another example of Obama’s “great judgment”!

9-11

As I was thinking about the events of this date 7 years ago, it truly saddens me that so many people seem to have forgotten what, at the time, we all swore never to forget.   The sudden, vicious attacks by deadly serious nutcases who wanted to die a “martyr’s death”… the burning, collapsing towers… police and firemen running into the buildings as thousands streamed out… the fear that it was only the beginning of many more attacks… the nearly 3000 innocent victims and their families… the nearly yearlong process of cleaning up the debris of the site and burying the dead.

We stayed united for what… a couple of months maybe?  Then some politicians began to figure out they could make political hay by undermining the President in time of war and the game was on.  Despicable little toads like Joe Wilson began a campaign to undercut the President’s credibility on WMDs and the rest is history.

Yet, despite all the caterwauling and crisis mongering that has taken place in Congress and in the media, we are now 7 years on and there has not been another major terrorist attack since then on US soil.  Bush will never be given credit for that by those so determined to brand his administration a “failure” for political purposes.  I still remain convinced that history will be much kinder to him than his current critics.

All of this has brought to mind words written by Thomas Paine during some of the most difficult days of the American Revolution.  They were read to George Washington’s troops on the eve of their daring and ultimately successful assault on the Hessians at the Battle of Trenton:

These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.   Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

So, for all the brave police and firemen, for all those GIs who have placed their lives on the line for the high purpose of establishing freedom, for all those who were taken from us so suddenly on that terrible day… we salute you all!  Despite what seems to take place with too many selfish, overly comfortable people in this society, there are thousands… no… millions of us who will NEVER forget!

Great piece

Thomas Sowell has a great piece today on National Review Online.  Although he is primarily an economist, he also is a keen observer of human nature.  Titled Grow Up, it examines the reasons why it is primarily younger people who are drawn to left wing causes.   Here’s a sample:

It is hardly surprising that young people prefer the political Left. The only reason for rejecting the Left’s vision is that the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the Left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow.

Most of us learn that from experience — but experience is precisely what the young are lacking.

“Experience” is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong…

…The agenda of the Left is fine for the world that they envision as existing today and the world they want to create tomorrow.

That is a world not hemmed in on all sides by inherent constraints and the painful trade-offs that these constraints imply. Theirs is a world where there are attractive, win-win “solutions” in place of those ugly trade-offs in the world that the rest of us live in.

Theirs is a world where we can just talk to opposing nations and work things out, instead of having to pour tons of money into military equipment to keep them at bay. The Left calls this “change” but in fact it is a set of notions that were tried out by the Western democracies in the 1930s — and which led to the most catastrophic war in history.

For those who bother to study history, it was precisely the opposite policies in the 1980s — pouring tons of money into military equipment — which brought the Cold War and its threat of nuclear annihilation to an end.

The Left fought bitterly against that “arms race” which in fact lifted the burden of the Soviet threat, instead of leading to war as the elites claimed.

Personally, I wish Ronald Reagan could have talked the Soviets into being nicer, instead of having to spend all that money. Only experience makes me skeptical about that “kinder and gentler” approach and the vision behind it.

In some ways its an expanded version of the old line that “a liberal is just a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet” updated and applied to the current presidential campaign.

Going…going…gone!

An absolute home run!  There is no other way to describe Sarah Palin’s speech tonight.  It had it all… humor, a compelling narrative, tons of things that the average working person the Dems claim to care so much about can relate to… not to mention the multiple times when she stuck the knife in Obama’s pretensions – all done with a smile!

Now we see why the Messiah’s cronys in the media have been so desperate to destroy her the last few days… she scares them to death!

A star is born!

‘Nuff said

Saw this online and thought it was great concise summary:

“Obama wants to raise taxes and kill babies.

Sarah wants to raise babies and kill taxes.”

A pair of contrasts

With all the attacks in the media on Sarah Palin, I think there are a couple of interesting contrasts to be drawn between her and the top of the ticket on the other side.  Both have to do with the difference between just talking about how something is important or actually doing something about it.

The first relates to the subject of who is the real reformer.  Obama claims that he is, but he has precious little demonstrated record of ever standing up to the corrupt Chicago political machine from which he came.  (For those reading this who don’t know me well, I grew up in Chicago during the reign of the first Mayor Daley, one of the most powerful and corrupt politicians this country has seen since Boss Tweed.  His son, the current mayor, is only slightly better!)

…Obama has never challenged the corruption of his city and has frequently backed its perpetrators. He has demonstrated a craven willingness to endorse anyone favored by Mayor Richard M. Daley, no matter how crooked or damaging to the city. Obama’s record has frequently placed him in opposition to the bipartisan reformers who have tried to clean up Chicago’s massive and systemic corruption problem. He endorsed Daley last year and in 2006 he endorsed Todd Stroger, whose cronyism and machine politics are well-documented in the Chicago press. In the 2006 primary, Obama endorsed Dorothy Tillman, an Alderman who pulled a gun on her colleagues during a redistricting hearing, and who…had in fact become a Daley ally out of necessity after opposing him earlier in her career…

Both in Illinois and in Washington, Obama has used his position to cosponsor legislation that rained millions of dollars upon Tony Rezko and his other major donors in the slum-development business, to obtain state grants for his private law clients, and to earmark funds for government contractors who donated money to his campaigns and even to his wife’s employer, which had just given her an annual $200,000 raise. (See the full David Fredosso article.)

By contrast look at Sarah Palin’s record of taking on the power brokers of her own party:

But the most impressive part of Palin’s resumé, and the sharpest contrast with Obama’s, is how she has taken on Alaska Republicans, fighting against political corruption in her own party and taking on some of the biggest names in the state. She may not have as much time in elected office as Obama, but Palin at least has a reform resumé, something that Obama cannot legitimately claim.

A far more compelling contrast as far as I am concerned is contained in this article by Dinesh D’Souza.  Titled “Talk vs. Action”, it contrasts the loving acceptance and compassion shown by the Palin family to their pregnant 17 year old daughter with the Obama’s ignoring of his half brother’s plight of living in abject poverty in Kenya.  Some may say that this is not their problem.  However, Obama has taken to quoting Matthew 25 lately as the guiding principle of his life (Jesus speaking: “…whatever you do for the least of these, you have done for me.”)  If this in fact is more than just words, how come the Obama family, now raking in several million dollars a year, can’t be bothered to help him at all?

Talk is cheap.  Actions speak much louder!