Fannie/Freddie cover ups caught on video

Watch this video to see the Fannie/Freddie mess being exposed in 2004, and then the cover up.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

A great day for America

It was a great day for America. Enough members of Congress had the courage to respond to the people of America instead of their donors and sugar daddies.

Tennessee Democrats -- Cohen, Cooper, Gordon, and Tanner supported Nancy Pelosi and big business by voting Yes for the bailout.

Tennessee Republicans -- Blackburn, Davis, David, Duncan, Wamp, and Davis were joined by Democrat Lincoln Davis voting AGAINST the bailout as the vast majority of the public wanted.

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional "leaders" invited to the White House to devise a bailout "solution" are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said "I do not see" any "possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury."

Moreover, he said that the federal government has "probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing."

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they "need to do more" to help sub prime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

But the magic words "affordable housing" and the ugly word "redlining" led to politicians directing where loans and investments should go, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and various other coercions and threats.

Does anyone else think this is akin to "vote buying?"

Three men who brought down wall street

 

Be sure to read the "where they are now" at the end of the page!!

 

 

Here is a quick look into 3 former Fannie Mae executives who have brought down Wall Street.

 

 

Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae.  Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae  when auditing discovered severe irregulaties in Fannie Mae's accounting activities.

 

 

At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted, " Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday conceding that "mistakes were made" and saying he would assume responsibility as he had earlier promised.

 

News reports indicate the company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years."  Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.

 

 

Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear.

 

http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/ .

 

The Government noted, "The 101 charges reveal how the individuals improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public.

 

The Notice explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner."  These charges were made in 2006.

 

The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.

 

 

Tim Howard -  Was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie.

 

In everyday English - he was cooking the books.

 

The Government Investigation determined that, "Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae,"

 

 

On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses.

 

Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004.

 

 

Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!

 

 

Jim Johnson -   A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO.

 

A look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about Johnson.

 

Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million." 

 

Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae. 

 

 

Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.

 

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

 

 

FRANKLIN RAINES? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Advisor

 

TIM HOWARD?  Howard is also a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama

 

JIM JOHNSON?  Johnson hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee

 

IF OBAMA PLANS ON CLEANING UP THE MESS - HIS ADVISORS HAVE THE EXPERTISE - THEY MADE THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

 

Would you trust the men who tore Wall Street down to build the New Wall Street ?

 

 

President Andrew Jackson speaks to bankers

TCWatch note: Where is President Jackson when we need him.?

"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."

 

Andrew Jackson, 7th US President

Obama was Kenyan Citizen - still won't produce birth certificate

Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org)

'Fight the Smears' Website Admits Obama was Kenyan Citizen: Where's the MSM?

By P.J. Gladnick

 

 

Following the controversy over the authenticity of  Barack Obama's birth certificate can be a bit confusing with all its detailed analysis. Your humble correspondent will leave that up to the experts. However, in response to the charge that Barack Obama is not an American citizen, Obama's Fight the Smears website [1], quoting FactCheck.Org, has made a bombshell admission...Barack Obama was once a citizen of Kenya. You read that right, Obama had Kenyan citizenship until 1982. Here is the startling admission published in Fight the Smears (emphasis mine):

 "When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom's dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.'s children.

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4, 1982."

So according to Fight the Smears itself, Obama's Kenyan citizenship expired on Aug. 4, 1982 meaning he held Kenyan citizenship until that point. This is astounding and so far no mainstream media outlet has reported on it. Will some reporter out there be so bold as to ask Obama if he was a Kenyan citizen until his 21st birthday as his own website concedes? 

Until reading of this Kenyan citizenship admission, I thought the lawsuit claimng that Obama was born in Kenya filed by Clinton supporter, Phil Berg, in Philadelphia was of minor import. However, by responding to it in the way it did, the Fight the Smears website has just opened up a big can of worms for Obama in its admission that he was a citizen of Kenya until 1982.

Meanwhile, instead of simply producing the original birth certificate in court and put the matter to rest, the Obama campaign seeks to evade that action by attempting to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. Here is the latest report [2] on this lawsuit from the Phoenixville News:

PHILADELPHIA — Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee filed a joint motion in federal court Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the Illinois senator to prove he's a citizen of the United States.

On Aug. 21, four days before the Democratic National Convention, Lafayette Hill attorney Philip Berg filed suit in Philadelphia seeking to remove the Democratic candidate from the November ballot claiming he was born in Kenya and not in America.

Berg asked the court for a temporary restraining order "prohibiting Obama from being formally confirmed as the Democratic Party nominee for president," according to court papers.

The Federal Election Commission was also named as a defendant in the legal action.

A day after the suit was filed, a federal judge denied the motion for a temporary restraining order.

When rumors emerged last summer questioning whether Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, his campaign posted a certificate of live birth on its Web site.

In a press statement circulated Wednesday by Berg's law office, the attorney insisted the Democratic candidate was born in Africa and thus ineligible to run for president.

"It is obvious that Obama was born in Kenya and does not meet the 'qualifications' to be president of the United States pursuant to our United States Constitution. Obama cannot produce a certified copy of his 'Vault' (version) Birth Certificate from Hawaii because it does not exist," the press release reads.

The suit seeks to compel the senator to produce the long version of his original birth certificate.

The motion to dismiss filed Wednesday called the suit's allegations "ridiculous and patently false," and argues the court lacks legal standing to challenge a presidential candidate's qualifications.

While Berg argued the case against Obama on constitutional grounds, Obama's attorney claims Berg must show a "specific and individualized injury" to prove standing in the case rather than a hypothetical one.

Earlier this year, a similar suit brought against Republican presidential candidate John McCain's and the Republican National Committee claimed that McCain wasn't "a natural born" citizen, having been born in the Panama Canal Zone while his father was serving in the military.

That suit was dismissed in July on grounds the plaintiff lacked standing in the case.

A minor lawsuit that seemed to be just a small irritant has now caused the Obama website to respond by admitting that he was once a Kenyan citizen. Where is the MSM on this? Which brave reporter will quote Obama's own website to him? Until now, there has been absolutely no mention in the mainstream media that we have a presidential candidate that once held citizenship with another country. 

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4, 1982."

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/09/29/fight-smears-website-admits-obama-was-kenyan-citizen-wheres-msm

Warning Shouts to Congress in 2003 and 2005 - watch it here

Fox News dug up some old video of Barney Frank telling Alan Greenspan that he was full of it when he warned of dire financial consequences if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not reined in.

 

 

Throw in numerous appeals by President Bush and John McCain to fix the system, lest we have a mortgage meltdown, and when the smoke from this week's Wall Street rescue mission clears, we can look back and point directly at Barney Frank and his Senate counterpart, Chris Dodd, as the culprits in this mess.

 

 

The problem is that these doofuses are in on the fix as well.

 

 

Check out 'ol Barney in action, circa 2003.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=3111993&referralPlaylistId=undefined

 

 

Where the current mess started (1999)

This is probably an article that the New York Times wishes it didn't have in its archives because it reveals the true culprits behind the current Fannie Mae meltdown.

You will find "uncomfortable" truths in this September 30, 1999 article by Steven A. Holmes starting with the title, "Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending," that you won't find in current editions of the New York Times.

September 30, 1999

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer.( and current Obama advisor)  ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

Steve Gill speaks: Bailout Plan should include four items

Steve Gill ( http://www.gillreport.com/dn_archive.php ) says:

In my view, any bailout plan should include four items:

 

 

1. No bonuses of any kind for any of those involved with these companies until the taxpayers are paid back in full.

 

 

2. No political contributions from executives of any of the companies that benefit from any taxpayer money, no PAC contributions from those companies, and no lobbying activity by those companies unless or until taxpayers are paid back in full.

 

 

3. No bailout of any loans that have been made to illegal aliens.

 

  (A huge proportion of the subprime home loans that threaten our entire economy were made to ILLEGAL ALIENS! CLICK HERE. )

 

4. No proceeds to any foreign banks or foreign corporations from the U.S. treasury. Not a dime!

 

Republicans should also demand that any bailout plan include an immediate 50% reduction in the Capital Gains tax in order to spur the economic growth that can help pay for this stuff!

A Mortgage Fable - WSJ

Once upon a time, in the land that FDR built, there was the rule of "regulation" and all was right on Wall and Main Streets. Wise 27-year-old bank examiners looked down upon the banks and saw that they were sound. America's Hobbits lived happily in homes financed by 30-year-mortgages that never left their local banker's balance sheet, and nary a crisis did we have.

 

Then, lo, came the evil Reagan marching from Mordor with his horde of Orcs, short for "market fundamentalists." Reagan's apprentice, Gramm of Texas and later of McCain, unleashed the scourge of "deregulation," and thus were "greed," short-selling, securitization, McMansions, liar loans and other horrors loosed upon the world of men.

 

Now, however, comes Obama of Illinois, Schumer of New York and others in the fellowship of the Beltway to slay the Orcs and restore the rule of the regulator. So once more will the Hobbits be able to sleep peacefully in the shire.

 

 

AP

From left: Christopher Cox, Henry Paulson, Harry Reid, Richard Shelby, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd and Ben Bernanke.

 

With apologies to Tolkien, or at least Peter Jackson, something like this tale is now being sold to the American people to explain the financial panic of the past year. It is truly a fable from start to finish. Yet we are likely to hear some version of it often in the coming months as the barons of Congress try to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the housing and mortgage meltdowns.

 

Yes, greed is ever with us, at least until Washington transforms human nature. The wizards of Wall Street and London became ever more inventive in finding ways to sell mortgages and finance housing. Some of those peddling subprime loans were crooks, as were some of the borrowers who lied about their incomes. This is what happens in a credit bubble that becomes a societal mania.

 

A Look Back at the Crisis Unfolding

• Stopping the Panic 09/20/08 – Now the task is to protect taxpayers and restore markets.
• Be It Resolved 09/19/08 – Paulson and Bernanke ask Congress for a resolution agency.
• The Fed and AIG 09/18/08 – Nationalizations aren't stopping the financial panic.
• McCain and the Markets 09/17/08 – Denouncing 'greed' and Wall Street isn't a growth agenda.
• The Fed's Epic Day 09/17/08 – It's only fair to praise the central bank when it does the right thing.
• Surviving the Panic 09/16/08 – A resolution agency, steady monetary policy, and a big tax cut.
• Wall Street Reckoning 09/15/08 – Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's refusal to blink won't get any second guessing from us.

But Washington is as deeply implicated in this meltdown as anyone on Wall Street or at Countrywide Financial. Going back decades, but especially in the past 15 or so years, our politicians have promoted housing and easy credit with a variety of subsidies and policies that helped to create and feed the mania. Let us take the roll of political cause and financial effect:

 

- The Federal Reserve. The original sin of this crisis was easy money. For too long this decade, especially from 2003 to 2005, the Fed held interest rates below the level of expected inflation, thus creating a vast subsidy for debt that both households and financial firms exploited. The housing bubble was a result, along with its financial counterparts, the subprime loan and the mortgage SIV.

 

Fed Chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke prefer to blame "a global savings glut" that began when the Cold War ended. But Communism was dead for more than a decade before the housing mania took off. The savings glut was in large part a creation of the Fed, which flooded the world with too many dollars that often found their way back into housing markets in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere.

 

- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Created by government, and able to borrow at rates lower than fully private corporations because of the implied backing from taxpayers, these firms turbocharged the credit mania. They channeled far more liquidity into the market than would have been the case otherwise, especially from the Chinese, who thought (rightly) that they were investing in mortgage securities that were as safe as Treasurys but with a higher yield.

 

These are the firms that bought the increasingly questionable mortgages originated by Angelo Mozilo's Countrywide and others. Even as the bubble was popping, they dived into pools of subprime and Alt-A ("liar") loans to meet Congressional demand to finance "affordable" housing. And they were both the cause and beneficiary of the great interest-group army that lobbied for ever more housing subsidies.

 

Fan and Fred's patrons on Capitol Hill didn't care about the risks inherent in their combined trillion-dollar-plus mortgage portfolios, so long as they helped meet political goals on housing. Even after taxpayers have had to pick up a bailout tab that may grow as large as $200 billion, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank still won't back a reduction in their mortgage portfolios.

 

- A credit-rating oligopoly. Thanks to federal and state regulation, a small handful of credit rating agencies pass judgment on the risk for all debt securities in our markets. Many of these judgments turned out to be wrong, and this goes to the root of the credit crisis: Assets officially deemed rock-solid by the government's favored risk experts have lately been recognized as nothing of the kind.

 

When debt instruments are downgraded, banks must then recognize a paper loss on these assets. In a bitter irony, the losses cause the same credit raters whose judgments allowed the banks to hold these dodgy assets to then lower their ratings on the banks, requiring the banks to raise more money, and pay more to raise it. The major government-anointed credit raters -- S&P, Moody's and Fitch -- were as asleep on mortgages as they were on Enron. Senator Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) tried to weaken this government-created oligopoly, but his reforms didn't begin to take effect until 2007, too late to stop the mania.

 

- Banking regulators. In the Beltway fable, bank supervision all but vanished in recent years. But the great irony is that the banks that made some of the worst mortgage investments are the most highly regulated. The Fed's regulators blessed, or overlooked, Citigroup's off-balance-sheet SIVs, while the SEC tolerated leverage of 30 or 40 to 1 by Lehman and Bear Stearns.

 

The New York Sun reports that an SEC rule change that allowed more leverage was made in 2004 under then Chairman William Donaldson, one of the most aggressive regulators in SEC history. Of course the SEC's task was only to protect the investor assets at the broker-dealers, not the holding companies themselves, which everyone thought were not too big to fail. Now we know differently (see Bear Stearns below).

 

Meanwhile, the least regulated firms -- hedge funds and private-equity companies -- have had the fewest problems, or have folded up their mistakes with the least amount of trauma. All of this reaffirms the historical truth that regulators almost always discover financial excesses only after the fact.

 

- The Bear Stearns rescue. In retrospect, the Fed-Treasury intervention only delayed a necessary day of reckoning for Wall Street. While Bear was punished for its sins, the Fed opened its discount window to the other big investment banks and thus sent a signal that they would provide a creditor safety net for bad debt.

 

Morgan Stanley, Lehman and Goldman Sachs all concluded that they could ride out the panic without changing their business models or reducing their leverage. John Thain at Merrill Lynch was the only CEO willing to sell his bad mortgage paper -- at 22 cents on the dollar. Treasury and the Fed should have followed the Bear trauma with more than additional liquidity. Once they were on the taxpayer dime, the banks needed a thorough scrubbing that might have avoided last week's stampede.

 

- The Community Reinvestment Act. This 1977 law compels banks to make loans to poor borrowers who often cannot repay them. Banks that failed to make enough of these loans were often held hostage by activists when they next sought some regulatory approval.

 

Robert Litan, an economist at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Post this year that banks "had to show they were making a conscious effort to make loans to subprime borrowers." The much-maligned Phil Gramm fought to limit these CRA requirements in the 1990s, albeit to little effect and much political jeering.

 

 

We could cite other Washington policies, including the political agitation for "mark-to-market" accounting that has forced firms to record losses after ratings downgrades even if the assets haven't been sold. But these are some of the main lowlights.

 

Our point here isn't to absolve Wall Street or pretend there weren't private excesses. But the investment mistakes would surely have been less extreme, and ultimately their damage more containable, if not for the enormous political support and subsidy for mortgage credit. Beware politicians who peddle fables that cast themselves as the heroes.

Palin smear videos linked to Obama campaign

http://www.examiner.com/x-701-National-Defense-Examiner~y2008m9d22-Smear-videos-against-Palin-linked-to-Obama-campaign

A series of videos designed to spread lies about the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin has been connected to a professional Public Relations firm. Those videos also share production qualities used in pro-Obama videos produced by Obama media campaign strategist David Axelrod.

Axelrod is considered by many to be a master of planting campaign messages on the internet to look like they did not originate from an organized campaign, a practice know as "astroturfing" (because of the fake grass-roots nature of the message). The smear videos have been connected to a professional PR firm, the kind of firm Axelrod would turn to in order to disseminate his message. No direct evidence of such a link has been established but to do so would be very difficult for any outside investigation.

Company employees and family members of Winner & Associates have been connected to the placement of these videos on Youtube. In addition, they have been shown to have sent notice of these videos to the fringe left-wing websites, the Democratic Underground and Daily Kos. Those smear machine websites then urged their readers - hundreds of thousands of them - to spread word about the smear videos.

Bloggers at the website "The Jawa Report" have used their collective investigative talent to expose the smear campaign. Normally, the blog specializes in tracking down and stopping sources of internet-based Islamic extremism, also known as jihadist propaganda. The bloggers recently turned their abilities to finding the source of the Palin smear videos. They present strong evidence linking Winner & Associates to the videos including an email from one of the postings that is assigned to the domain name for the company's website.

The "Jawans" also compared the smear videos to videos known to have been produced by David Axelrod's media company in support of the Obama campaign. The Jawa Report presents strong evidence that the female voice-over used in the smear videos is the same voice used in all of the Obama campaign videos from Axelrod's company. In addition, the investigators who routinely review jihadist videos for clues have determined that the video and production quality of the smear videos was high and likely done by a professional production company, not a "grassroots" effort.

The connections provide a clear, although yet to be fully proven, scenario. Based upon the evidence it appears that Axelrod likely orchestrated the smear campaign providing his media company resources to create the smear videos for the PR firm which launched the viral campaign. It was all meant to look like it came from somewhere other than the Obama campaign, a prime example of "astroturfing".

Pelosi's No-Energy Energy Bill Passes - Blue Dogs vote as instructed.

http://terryfrank.net/

Terry Frank reports what the Union City Daily Messenger covers up.

Tennessee's ole blue dog Democrats Lincoln Davis and John Tanner and Bart Gordon just do what Nancy says to do.  Don't you love their independence?

In Tennessee, the vote for Pelosi's no-energy energy bill was split down party lines.  Dems for.  Republicans against.  And now it will go to the esteemed Senate.  Lil' Bobbie C. Benjamins  will no doubt do his Gang thang.  And Alexander says he doesn't know what he'll do.  Pork? More energy?  Pork? More energy?  What's a Senator to do?

Pelosi, who earlier had thundered that there would be no vote on drilling, felt the pressure and offered up sham legislation—290 pages that she dropped at 10 pm and then began moving on the next morning.  No committee hearings.  No amendments.

It was all just marching orders from the Speaker and then like good little soldiers, all the Tennessee Democrats fell in line.  

My favorite response was one relayed to us by a caller who had called Congressman John Tanner's office. Tanner's office said that this bill was "better than doing nothing."

I'd beg to differ there.  This bill installs new PERMANENT bans.  If we did nothing, as Tanner's office mentions, life actually gets better.  The off shore drilling moratorium expires at the end of September and we've got access to American resources that will produce American oil with dollars flowing to America for American jobs.  And American taxes will be paid!

For five weeks Pelosi was on recess.  And for weeks prior she refused to even address or deal with the issue.  Then she drops a nearly 300 page piece of legislation and that's it, it's voted on, it's over.

NO WONDER Congress has approval ratings lower than the President!!

I'm hoping my guys in the Senate like Senator DeMint can work some magic (and you know, I really don't like beating up on my own Tennessee Senators.  I really, really wish I could be so proud of them.)

If not, our President could really be the hero of the day with the American people and veto all this mess. 

We're going to be talking about this more.  Tomorrow on the radio we'll talk with Brian Kennedy at the Institute for Energy Research and Aaron Tippin about his awesome new song and energy issues. And here's some good quotes from the Hill:

Natural Resources Committee ranking member Don Young (R-Alaska) said, "You can get more energy out of this bill if you took all of the copies of the bill and put it in a bonfire." House Republicans protested that the drilling expansion into the OCS was too limited and did not provide states with any financial incentives to allow the drilling to occur off their shore. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized Democrats for crafting the bill in secret and withholding copies until nearly 10 p.m. Monday night. "A bill gets filed at 9:45 the night before and then it's announced it's going to come to the floor the next morning as the first bill up, a bill that no one has read, written in the dark of night that won't do a damn thing about American energy," Boehner said. "Enough is enough!" He added, "It's rigged.  And the bill that's coming to the floor is nothing more than hoax on the American people and they will not buy it."

Obama's Double-Dealing Diplomacy

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20080916/bs_ibd_ibd/20080916issues01

 

Investors Business Daily

Election: Barack Obama, who premised his campaign on calling for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, has now been quietly telling Iraq "not so fast." It's part of a deceptive pattern.Iraq's Foreign Minister Moshyar Zebari told the New York Post's Amir Taheri that Obama made delaying the troops' return a key theme of his talks with Iraqi leaders during his campaign stop in Baghdad last July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the U.S. elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari told Teheri, on the record.

Funny, that's not what Obama told voters. He has made an immediate pullout the cornerstone of his campaign. Taheri's report signals the Democratic standard-bearer would manipulate the war's end for political advantage and is willing to deceive voters to do it.

This in itself is reprehensible. But his secret calls also leave U.S. troops unnecessarily in harm's way. It's the kind of foreign policy meddling that serves Obama's interests over the national interest.

"Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America," Taheri reported. "To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years."

Can Obama be trusted? We ask because he's shown a pattern of secretive double-dealing with voters, not just in his talking about small town voters one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco, as Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin pointed out, but particularly in foreign affairs.

It dates back to at least February, when Obama's economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, secretly told the Canadian embassy that Obama's demagoguery against NAFTA in the primaries was just a Styrofoam-pillar bid to win the Ohio vote.

Obama's pattern of deception continued. In March, Colombian troops raided a FARC terrorist camp in Ecuador and recovered a terrorist computer belonging to a top FARC warlord, Raul Reyes.

Computer e-mails revealed that someone who knew Obama's positions had secretly met with the terrorists and assured them Obama would cut U.S. military aid under Plan Colombia and veto its free trade pact. Both are major goals of the Marxist terrorists aligned with America's enemies.

Subsequent events confirmed this. Obama did come out in favor of shutting Colombia out of free trade. More disturbingly, Obama adviser Daniel Restrepo last week told Colombia's Radio Caracol that Obama planned to convert the military aid Colombia needs to crush terrorists into social aid programs that don't.

That's not the end of it. Now Obama is double-dealing with Iraqi officials to leave American troops in harm's way and prolong the appearance of war long enough to call it a failure and win votes.

The astonishing thing about Obama's deals is they're the very thing Democrats accused Republicans of without a shred of proof.

They accused Richard Nixon of making a secret deal with the North Vietnamese to prolong the Vietnam war enough to presumably win election in 1968.

Years later, in 1980, they accused Ronald Reagan of making a secret deal with Iranian terrorists holding U.S. diplomats hostage to win election over incumbent Jimmy Carter.

Neither of these claims, often repeated by leftist historians, has ever been proven. But the statement of Iraq's foreign minister, speaking to a leading writer on foreign policy, is considerably stronger as evidence. It signals that Obama places politics over the national interest to the extent that he would work against his own public positions to gull voters into electing him.

It's the absolute opposite of John McCain's courageous position supporting the surge in Iraq, even as politicos were warning him he'd lose the election for it. "I'd rather lose an election than lose a war," McCain said.

With Obama's promises to sit down with dictators in Venezuela, Cuba, Syria and Iran, voters have a right to ask if he's made any deals at odds with his public condemnations of them, too. Before he starts acting like president, he needs to come clean to voters and reveal his true positions. Whatever they are, voters have a right to know.

U.S. Code Title 18

§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments [Logan Act?]

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

 

Danger of Vote Fraud in the 2008 Election

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28562

by Phyllis Schlafly (more by this author) The most provocative line in the Democratic national platform adopted in Denver is: "We oppose laws that require identification in order to vote or register to vote." Since it's routine to show an ID in order to board a plane and do dozens of other very ordinary things, what's the big deal about showing an ID to exercise the most important privilege of citizenship? That question is answered in the new book by John Fund called "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy." Honest elections absolutely depend on preventing the stuffing of the ballot box by people who are not eligible to vote. Among those who are not eligible to vote are those who are dead, who are not residents of the precincts where they vote, who are registered to vote in another state, who are underage and especially those who are not citizens. Votes cast by any of those can cancel out your vote and, in close elections, decide the winner. Fund describes how easy it is for unscrupulous politicians to buy voter impersonators with a little cash and get them to cast illegal votes. The Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals explained "the extreme difficulty of apprehending a voter impersonator. He enters the polling place, gives a name that is not his own, votes and leaves. If later it is discovered that the name he gave is that of a dead person, no one at the polling place will remember the face of the person who gave that name." The Democrats have hysterically fought against voter ID laws in Congress, in state legislatures and in the courts, taking what they thought was their best case, the Indiana law, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They lost there because they ran into liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, who, hailing from Chicago, was acquainted with many "flagrant examples" of election fraud going back to Mayor Richard Daley's shenanigans that swung Illinois to John F. Kennedy in 1960. The National Voter Registration Act (known as the Motor Voter Law), the very first law signed by President Bill Clinton, imposed fraud-friendly rules on the states by requiring them to offer registration to anyone who applies for a driver's license, to offer mail-in registration with no identification needed, and to make it very difficult to purge dead and moved-away voters from registration rolls. The voter rolls in many U.S. cities now contain more names than the U.S. Census lists as residents over age 18. The Motor Voter Law, according to Fund, "has fueled an explosion of phantom voters." In the four years since passage, nearly 26 million names were added to the voter rolls nationwide. One investigation in Indiana showed that hundreds of thousands of names were people who had died, moved away or gone to prison. Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt's report on the 2000 election showed how the Motor Voter Law facilitated fraud in one district. He reported that votes were illegally cast by 14 who were dead, 68 who voted twice, 79 who were registered from vacant lots, 62 who were federal felons, 52 who were state felons and an undetermined number who were registered from drop-sites where multiple fake names were registered to one person. Fund's book makes fascinating reading because of his descriptions of many specific examples of vote fraud that actually determined the outcome of elections. Fund describes in detail some of the more outrageous examples of recent vote fraud in Chicago, Indiana, St. Louis, Seattle, Milwaukee, Mississippi and Georgia. Fund believes that the biggest opportunity for vote fraud this year is the registration tactics of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). ACORN is a classic Saul Alinsky-style community-organizing group, and it has received hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars as well as corporate donations. It's no surprise that ACORN is closely associated with Barack Obama. Right after graduating from the Harvard Law school, Obama was recruited by ACORN to run a successful voter registration drive for an ACORN affiliate, Project Vote. ACORN claims that, along with Project Vote, it registered 1.15 million new voters in 2004 and deployed 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers on Election Day. The job of handling legitimate voters is tremendously complicated by phony registrations and by the tactic of filing new registrations on the last possible day when there is not adequate time to verify them. In 2008, Obama was a major supporter of a Democratic housing bill that provided $200 million to community groups (such as ACORN) that are counseling homeowners facing foreclosure. ACORN is pledging to spend $35 million this year registering persons who will vote. With the 2008 elections as close as they are predicted to be, Obama's best chance to win is to flood new names on the registration rolls who may or may not be eligible voters. It is more important than ever that voter ID be used in order to make sure that ballot boxes are not stuffed by voter impersonators.

Obama's new ad: McCain doesn't use a computer

TCWatch has been thinking about Obama's new ad this morning; something dawned on us:

McCain can't use his arms effectively Obama!!!!

He has war injuries you moron!!!

The commies broke his arms and dislocated his shoulders several times during torture!!!

Of course he can't sit in front of a computer and raise up his arms and type.

3 Planks in the Official 2008 Democratic Platform.

We don't make this stuff up,  here are three planks from the 2008 Official Democratic Platform.

"We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act." A law passed in 1996 to prevent judges from forcing other states to validate Massachusetts' same-sex marriages.

"We need stronger international institutions." So, the platform promises to "create a $2 billion Global Education Fund . . . with the goal of supporting a free, quality, basic education for every child in the world."

The plank that takes the cake is: "We oppose laws that require identification in order to vote or register to vote."

Wonder why dems want people to vote without showing identification????

Barker's candidate speaks:

Judy Barker's candidate speaks about Sarah Palin

OBAMA: 'LIPSTICK ON A PIG, STILL A PIG'

 

Desperation is setting in

 

Do our State Representative Candidates support abortion ??

Tennessee Conservative Watchers in Dyer County are reporting that Judy Barker was handing out Obama signs from her campaign booth at the Dyer County Fair.

 

TCWatch finds it strange that someone running as a conservative would support an extreme ProAbortion candidate.

 

While in the Illinios state legislature, Obama voted ( three times) against the Induced Birth Infant Liability Act. The bill was designed to extend the same medical care to babies who happen to survive an abortion attempt as is enjoyed by all babies born alive. 

 

Obama is also on record supporting Partial Birth Abortion.

 

Does Judy Barker support someone who's eager to extend full constitutional rights to terrorists but refuses to provide the most fundamental right of life to a living, breathing infant that happened to survive an abortion?

 

 

Bill Sanderson is endorsed by Tennessee Right to Life and we know where he stands.

 

Would someone from the Barker campaign please respond. We'll give you equal time.

 

Cindy McCain is more qualified than Obama bin Biden

After watching Cindy McCain's bio last night, TCWatch can only conclude that she has more executive experience than Obama bin Biden.

 

Just compare Cindy and Michelle

Michelle Obama

* Graduate Princeton University, thesis "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community. * Graduate Harvard Law School * Corporate Lawyer at Chicago law firm Sidley Austin * Staff of the Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Daley * Associate dean at the University of Chicago * Vice President, Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals

Cindy McCain

* Graduate USC, Masters in Special Education * Special education teacher working with children with Down syndrome and other disabilities * Founded the American Voluntary Medical Team - a non-profit organization that organized trips for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel to provide MASH-like emergency medical care to disaster-struck or war-torn third-world areas such as Micronesia, Vietnam (before relations were normalized between them and the U.S), Kuwait (arriving five days after the conclusion of the Gulf War), Iraq, Nicaragua, India, Bangladesh and El Salvador. Led 55 of these missions * Founded the Hensley Family Foundation, which donates monies towards children's programs in Arizona and nationally * Became actively involved with Operation Smile in taking parts in trips with it to Morocco, Vietnam, and India. * Chairwoman of the HALO Trust to remove landmines in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and Angola

Obama's "community organizer" outfit

TCWatch note: Obama is referred to as a "community organizer". Well, here is the outfit he organized with and for. Michelle Malkin exposes the absolute corruption.

The Acorn Obama Knows

Michelle Malkin

 

If you don't know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up. This left-wing group takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers -- you and me -- and has leveraged nearly four decades of government subsidies to fund affiliates that promote the welfare state and undermine capitalism and self-reliance, some of which have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and encouraging voter fraud. A new whistleblower report from the Consumer Rights League claims that Chicago-based ACORN has commingled public tax dollars with political projects.

 

Who in Washington will fight to ensure that your money isn't being spent on these radical activities?

 

Don't bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a "community organizer" and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN's political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who "best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about" -- like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money. Let's take a closer look at the ACORN Obama knows.

 

Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including "Leon Spinks," "Frekkie Magoal" and "Fruto Boy Crispila." Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN's criminal sabotage "an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls."

 

The group's vandalism on electoral integrity is systemic. ACORN has been implicated in similar voter fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio and at least 12 other states. The Wall Street Journal noted: "In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier."

 

In March, Philadelphia elections officials accused the nonprofit advocacy group of filing fraudulent voter registrations in advance of the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary. The charges have been forwarded to the city district attorney's office.

 

Under the guise of "consumer advocacy," ACORN has received money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD funds hundreds, if not thousands, of left-wing "anti-poverty" groups across the country led by ACORN. Last October, HUD announced more than $44 million in new housing counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The White House has increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since taking office in 2001, despite the role most of these recipients play as activist satellites of the Democratic Party. The AARP scored nearly $400,000 for training; the National Council of La Raza ("The Race") scooped up more than $1.3 million; the National Urban League raked in nearly $1 million; and the ACORN Housing Corporation received more than $1.6 million.

 

As the Consumer Rights League points out in its new expose, the ACORN Housing Corporation has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens in partnership with Citibank. It relies on undocumented income, "under the table" money, which may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Moreover, the group's "financial justice" operations attack lenders for "exotic" loans, while recommending 10-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and risky reverse mortgages. Whistleblower documents reveal internal discussions among the group that blur the lines between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive electioneering activities. The group appears to shake down corporate interests with relentless PR attacks, and then enters "no lobby" agreements with targeted corporations after receiving payment.

 

Republicans have largely looked the other way as ACORN has expanded its government-funded empire. But finally, a few conservative voices in Congress have called for investigation of the group's apparent extortion schemes. This week, GOP Reps. Tom Feeney, Jeb Hensarling and Ed Royce called on Democrat Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to convene a hearing to probe potential illegalities and abuse of taxpayer funds by ACORN's management and minions alike.

 

Where does the candidate of Hope and Change -- the candidate of Reform and New Politics -- stand on the issue? Barack Obama, ACORN's senator, is for more of the same old, same old subsidizing of far-left politics in the name of fighting for the poor while enriching ideological cronies. It's the Chicago way.

Enough with the Rich Lawyer thing

Americans are tired and fed up with Rich Lawyers running the country.

The in-the-tank-for-Obama liberal national media had their head handed to them tonight by a smiling hockey mom from small-town Alaska.

 Watch Sara Barracuda  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKgNrb3baNM

Mr. Newt drops the hammer on MSNBC's Ron Allen

MSNBC's Ron Allen (interviewing Newt Gingrich) said:

"But to be fair, her resume is not something we're familiar seeing with presidential candidates."

Mr. Newt responded with,

It's stronger than Barack Obama's. I don't know why you guys walk around saying this baloney. She has a stronger resume than Obama. She's been a real mayor, he hasn't. She has been a real governor, he hasn't. She's been in charge of the Alaskan National Guard, he hasn't. She was a whistleblower who defeated an incumbent mayor. He has never once shown that kind of courage. She's a whistleblower who turned in the chairman of her own party and got him fined $12,000. I've never seen Obama do one thing like that. She took on the incumbent governor of her own party and beat him, and then she beat a former Democratic governor in the general election. I don't know of a single thing Obama's done except talk and write.

Newt then challenged Allen:

I'd like you to tell me one thing Sen. Obama's done.

Allen then bailed out saying:

Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to leave it there. I'm not going to argue the case. Thanks very much.

Watch the entire exchange and more  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjGhy8LVwAo

 

Neptunus Lex exposes a MSNBC "trick"

 

http://www.neptunuslex.com/

So, for whatever reason I was watching Dubya's taped speech to the RNC on MSNBC just now. It was a recording of the earlier speech. Time for the producers to tee it up in just the right way, if they were so disposed.

George Bush has been a politician for a while, and he's given his fair share of speeches - although, not admittedly, the kind of taped speeches his predecessor had to give. So I cringed for him when he paused on his video at all the right moments for applause, and smiled, and waited, and heard… nothing. Just those painful moments dragging on in silence. Him smiling.

It went on and on, painfully. An applause line, a pause - nothing. Nothing but an expectant smile that dragged on for moment after silent moment. Almost unbelievably: There was red meat stuff out there for the true believers. The devil would have gotten a cheer or two. Even Bill Clinton could have gotten a rise out of that crowd.

But no, nothing.

I know that folks on the left are eager to tie McCain to the failed policies of a failed Bush's failed failures, while the right would be just as happy to leave it all behind and not deal with the emotional baggage of the infantilized. But, still: This was, and is, our president. Their 2004 nominee. It was, to me, inexplicable.

A sudden seed of suspicion grew in my mind. I grabbed the remote and changed the channel away from those painful, awkward silences on MSNBC to CBS. And heard - in the very same moment, at the very same words in the president's speech - the ringing cheers and adulation of the crowd.

MSNBC had jiggered the speech in a way calculated to maximally humiliate a sitting president of the United States of America. This is what passes for "news" at Keith Olbermann's house.

Can you dig it?

Update: I had to shift again from CBS to ABC in order to hear what Fred Thompson was saying. Apparently CBS thought that the former presidential candidate's speech was not as newsworthy as Katie Couric's "analysis".

This is at least partly why I don't watch TV.