The US Gov’t under Clinton and Bush encouraged banks to lend money to risky wanna-be home owners (read: minorities and first time buyers) under the pretense that home ownership is the gateway to nirvana. Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac start buying these NINJA loans. Houses are flipped all over to this new pool of debtors with ever increasing price tags. The whole thing collapses and everyone loses $0.40 on their pre-2008 dollar.
Now, those aforementioned minorities and first time buyers are at the same levels as when the policy started.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think if we’d not bought the loans from the banks and not forced them to make risky loans, the minorities might be better off?
A law for you and yours
While Washington takes emergency action to save themselves, American families and businesses are tossed overboard. What’s worse is that Washington seems completely oblivious to their own hypocrisy. On the same day that Hill staffers are being bailed out of Obamacare, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is launching her road-show to sell its benefits to everyone else.
The Sound Of Settled Science
WUWT: Video analysis and scene replication suggests that Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project fabricated their Climate 101 video “Simple Experiment”
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
… the dedication of the first commercial German wind farm in the North Sea on August 10 is set to be a low-key affair. Chancellor Angela Merkel cancelled her scheduled appearance. And Environment Minister Peter Altmaier and European Union Energy Commission Günther Oettinger, both members of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), have hesitated to accept the invitation from EWE, an energy company based in the northern German city of Oldenburg.
The reason is that Riffgat has a cosmetic defect: the wind farm is still missing part of its power line to the mainland. For the time being, instead of producing energy, Riffgat is actually consuming it. To prevent the rotors from corroding in the salty air, they have to be supplied with electricity produced with diesel generators.
[…]
The shift in the direction of political winds immediately affected the turbine builders. Several companies that were recruiting on a large scale only a few months ago are now laying people off. One company, Siag Nordseewerke, has filed for bankruptcy, and others could soon follow. The offshore boom has hardly begun, and yet it already seems to be over.
h/t Maz2
Justice For Fort Hood Heroes Act
The Justice for Fort Hood Heroes Act, introduced Friday, would ensure that the victims of the Fort Hood attack receive the same benefits as Purple Heart recipients, including combat-related special compensation.
The attack left 13 dead and more than 30 injured.
Many of the Fort Hood victims say they’ve been denied Purple Hearts, as well as some financial and medical benefits due to the military’s refusal to categorize the massacre as an act of terrorism, instead discussing it as “workplace violence.”
And in case there were lingering doubts;
I, Nidal Malik Hasan, am compelled to renounce any oaths of allegiances that require me to support/defend (any – sic) man made constitution (like the constitution of the United States) over the commandments mandated in Islam … I therefore formally renounce my oath of office … this includes my oath of U.S. citizenship.”
Public Unions vs. The Public
Corruption, unaccountability, and lack of integrity. And that’s just the beginning.
The Company You Keep
Contest is open only to individuals who have reached the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence at the time of entry, who do NOT reside in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the Province of Quebec, Sudan, or Syria …
h/t viewer from afar
Sammy Was Just A Sweet Yoot
A special home
Father, Mother and the whiney kid that just wants to spend trillons of dollars.
Senator Diane Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was defending the National Security Agency’s top secret spying when she brought out a prop identifying North America — the United States, Canada and Mexico — as the “Homeland”.
Reader Tips
In 1834 Scottish songwriter Alicia Scott gave inspired melody to a poem written almost 150 years earlier by an infatuated Royal Scots soldier named William Douglas, and this lovely, memorable song has remained a standard through the centuries. From 1934, here’s Canadian singer Deanna Durbin’s recording of the timeless love song Annie Laurie. (Lyrics here.)
The comments thread is open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Role-Reversal
I guess the Mounties are pretty good at getting their man, too.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Madness of Crowds: Single Ants Beat Colonies At Easy Choices
Phony Scandal
Sources Say CIA Was Moving Guns in Benghazi
“We’re getting calls from people who are close to people who were [in Benghazi at the time] that they were moving guns. So where are the guns?” asked Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sub-committee chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Wolf also wonders what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi on that night. Stevens and three others were killed over the course of the attacks.
“Are they in a warehouse somewhere? Some people say they moved on to Turkey and then from Turkey to Syria,” Wolf told Breitbart News on Thursday. “Did they fall into the hands of some of the Jihadis?”
“Nobody knows, so I think there are so many questions from the failure to respond to where the guns went,” he stated.
A reminder: Glenn Beck is the crazy one.
More…
Cold, Manicured Hands
This could turn anti-gun Hollywood on its head: Paparazzi Turn to Drones
Faster, please. I hope they stalk Jaime Foxx from dawn to dusk.
h/t Bob H.
“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”
“Lew, Carney and Obama himself act like people worried about a threat lying a little farther under investigators’ shovels. And they should be considering the suspicious timeline of Obama-appointed IRS chief counsel William Wilkins visiting the president on April 23 last year; IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visiting the White House the next day; and Wilkins’ office sending the IRS “guidance” on the Tea Party the day after that. . . . If we find our tax-collection agency helped re-elect a president under political orders, Watergate could look trivial by comparison.”
Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online.
An Honest Conversation About Race
Looks like the age old Race Discussion is slowly turning in the right direction. But can the situation really ever improve if POTUS is, himself, a race hustler?
Update: Very much related is this recent discussion between Adam Carolla and Drew Pinsky. As Carolla alludes to, the folks on the Left have NO solutions to helping poor Blacks & Hispanics rise above their squalor. But when he suggests that the key lies in focusing on the family and education, he’s immediately deemed to be a racist. h/t Kathy Shaidle
Oh, Frack!
Extinguishing life on earth before extinguishing was cool: “Fracking hell!”
… the researchers calculate that the impact would have generated thousands of earthquakes of up to magnitude 9.9 (significantly more powerful than the largest recorded by modern seismologists) for hundreds of kilometres around. In effect, it would have been the biggest fracking operation in history, releasing oil and gas from the shattered rock in prodigious quantities.
The upshot, Dr Tohver believes, would have been a huge burp of methane into the atmosphere. Since methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, that burp would have resulted in instant global warming, making things too hot for much of the planet’s animal life. Presto! The Permian mass extinction is explained.
But of course.
h/t Larry
CTV’s Randomly Selected Eco-Socialist In The Street Interview
James, via email;
CTV Ottawa just ran a story on its 6 o’clock news about Trans-Canada’s plan to run crude-oil through a natural gas pipeline that goes through eastern Ontario.
It did one interview with a “concerned resident”…this dickhead: Ian Angus.
http://climateandcapitalism.com/tag/ian-angus/
http://socialisteducation.blogspot.ca/2009/04/audio-capitlaism-and-climate-change-ian.html
They presented this interview without identifying him as the leftist, socialist, arsehole that he is. Just another “man in the street”.
I hope you can come up with the CTV Ottawa footage – I just don’t have the knowhow.
And I’m on the road and don’t have the time or resources. If someone can come up with the clip, pass it along. Dishonest agenda journalism or incompetence? You can mock them here.
Update: The clip is here along with a better Twitter link to the incompetent/dishonest reporter responsible: Joanne Schnurr.
Reader Tips
Rubber sharks can’t beat Batman.
It’s an unwritten law.
h/t Kate
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Ontario Byelection Open Thread
I haven’t followed, so please, fill in the blanks.