It’s too late for 2012, but man she would get my vote in 2016 in a heartbeat! This is Kira Davis. I would say that I am smitten; but, naturally, she’s married. Heart-Ache, Heart-Ache indeed. 🙁
This comes via Gateway Pundit and HotAir.com:
Looks like this Church learned the lesson I learned here a few years ago:
A West Bloomfield man was arraigned Thursday on charges that he embezzled more than $600,000 from a Pontiac church over the last six years, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said.
Reuben Bynum, 61, was released on bond. He had been the financial officer for Trinity Baptist Church until August, when the money was discovered missing, the Sheriff’s Office said.
A complaint from a deacon led to a review of church accounts, the Sheriff’s Office said. It showed that Bynum forged a signature on church checks and misused a church ATM card.
It is a lesson that I learned here back in 2006, which I wrote about here a few weeks ago, when writing about something else — and that is, if a Baptist knows that they can stab you in the back, they will most likely do it. Although, to be fair to my Baptist brethren, most so-called Christians would do it too.
Proving my ever-growing suspicions on this guy:
In March 2005, David James called Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-Texas) Congressional office for some documentation.
James’s nonprofit group, the Liberty Committee, had paid for one of Paul’s flights, and James needed a receipt or boarding pass to document the expense. He’d been pushing Paul for the paperwork and now, on the phone, he was “putting his foot down.”
“So I called the office manager,” James recalled. “They knew me, like, as well as they knew Ron. And I said, ‘Liberty Committee is paying for this expense. I need to get the boarding pass or the ticket or something.’”
The office manager said Paul’s Congressional office no longer had documentation for that flight; Paul had sent it in to the House Finance Office for reimbursement. But Liberty Committee had already sent a check to American Express to cover the charge on Paul’s credit card.
“I don’t care what flights the Liberty Committee pays for,” James said, “because Ron never took enough in expenses to come anywhere near his value to us. And this was piddly. But it’s just what it was.”
James first thought it was accidental and faxed a letter to Paul’s office, requesting that its money be returned for the flight. Paul did repay the $403.70, but the episode strained their relationship and led to a falling out a year later.
In a subsequent conversation, James raised the issue, and Paul “was very curt, and he simply said, ‘Yep, well, happens all the time,’” James, 64, told Roll Call.
via Associate Confronted Rep. Ron Paul About Flights : Roll Call News.
Ed Morrissey also writes about this, and thinks that Ron Paul should come clean or face a house ethics committee hearing. I wholeheartedly agree. If you are going to pawn yourself off as the most honest person on capital hill; you should try actually being the most honest person on capital hill. I have written on my previous blog about this man’s claims to be the most honest politician, and for a short time, I actually believed that, but as time wore on, I began to read about the stuff that Mr. Paul does and does not want his own followers really knowing about it. But, I, as well as other bloggers have documented his antics for a while now.
While Mr. Paul might have some very good ideas on capitalism, free trade and our monetary system; his utter hypocrisy when it comes to issues like this and his utter idiotic ideas on foreign policy handicap him. Not only this, but his past writings that did have his name on them, and his associations with Jew haters, racists and other such sort of nonsense make him someone, despite what I said recently, which was honestly in jest; that I could never, in good conscience vote for in a million years. All one would need to do is look through the archives of my previous blog to see all the stuff that I have written about the man over the past 6 years.
Again, while I can appreciate his opposition to Wilsonian foreign policy; something that I have spoken out against myself here, and I can and do agree with very much, as much as I agree with his idea of free trade, free markets and the gold standard. I cannot side with this man because of the rest of his problems. As I have said on this blog and my previous blog many, many times; Ron Paul is NOT, nor has he EVER been the Messianic figure that many of his well-intentioned followers assumed him to be. This proves that and if the Ron Paul crowd had any sort of common sense at all; they would back away from Ron Paul and support someone who could actually fix this Nation’s problems.
However, if I know the Ron Paul crowd like I do; they will simply dismiss this true story, as some sort of Jewish conspiracy by the Illuminati and the Bilderberg boys to keep him from winning the White House, which is pretty much par for their course. I could tell you stories of how when I, on my previous blog, would write something even remotely critical of Ron Paul; my inbox would overflow with Ron Paul supporters calling me everything from a Neo-Con (which is Jew in Ron Paul speak) to a Bush-lover. Once, though, one of them went over the line and sent a death threat via e-mail. I did report that to the FBI in Detroit. This is why I try to avoid writing about the man. Because his most devout followers are absolutely insane.
Trust me, when I tell you this; the left’s crazies, have nothing on Ron Paul’s crazies. 😯
Another campaign promise broken:
(Reuters) – The Obama administration on Tuesday threw in the towel on one of its biggest bribery cases in the military equipment business, which it had touted as part of its campaign to crack down on corruption, moving to dismiss charges against 16 defendants.
Twenty-two people were arrested in early 2010 on charges that they had tried to bribe a supposed African defense minister by padding their bids to supply military equipment to his country.
Instead, the minister was an FBI agent who was part of the first large-scale undercover operation of its kind seeking to root out corruption under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal to try to bribe government officials.
U.S. prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the case after two lengthy trials ended in mistrials and three defendants were acquitted. Three individuals have already pleaded guilty.
via U.S. abandons high-profile bribery sting prosecution | Reuters.
Hope and Change? Yeah right! 🙄
Via Israel Today:
A mob of some 50 Palestinian Muslims stoned a group of Christian tourists atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on Sunday morning. Three of the Israeli police officers who acted to protect the Christian group were wounded by the stone-throwers.
Police arrested 11 Palestinians, several of them minors, for their role in the attack.
The attack is believed to have been instigated by the former Muslim mufti of Jerusalem, Ekrama Sabri, who told Palestinian media over the weekend that Jewish groups were planning to break into the mosques that occupy the holy compound and desecrate them.
Sabri urged all local Muslims to protect the mosques from “the Israeli conspiracy against the city and its holy places.”
Muslim religious figures regularly claim that Israel is plotting to destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque to pave the way for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple, which the Muslims now insist never previously existed.
Because of the constant threat of Muslim violence, and despite the fact that the Temple Mount is the most holy place on earth to Jews and many Christians, the Israeli police comply with Muslim demands for harsh restrictions on non-Muslim visitors to the site. For instance, Jews and Christians are forbidden to carry Bibles atop the Temple Mount or to utter even silent prayers within its walls. Jews and Christians are regularly detained for violating these conditions.
In other violence, Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip fired a Grad-type missile at the southern Israel city of Beersheva on Saturday. The projectile landed in an open area just outside Beersheva and did not cause any injuries or damage. Two more short-range rockets hit nearby Israeli towns.
Palestinian forces fired at least two rockets at southern Israel – one at the coastal city of Ashkelon – on Friday, again causing no injuries or damage.
But-but-but-but they’re just peaceful Muslims! 🙄
The same damned peaceful Muslims who did this:
and this:
These are the men who did the above, and Shanksville, Pa:
They were acting under the command of this man:
The liberals in this Country want to flush this event down the memory hole. They would rather blame Bush and Cheney for the attacks; and not the incompetence of Bill Clinton, which was the real cause of 9/11. Like his incompetence in rigging the housing market to fail, like it did. This is why I no longer vote Democratic Party; because those bastards are the reason why we are living in the police state hole that we live in now.
Some people cannot see that; and that’s their own darned fault. I’m no fool and I see things for what they really are. Terrorism is a threat and these same people CLAIM to want a two-state solution! Which is a lie of the devil, they want to see Israel pushed into the sea and the Jewish race exterminated from the earth, kind of like Hitler.
Remember this come November and vote accordingly.
There are not enough words in the English language to tell how exactly how I feel about this idiot:
NEWARK — Bobby Brown, the ex-husband of Whitney Houston, left the New Hope Baptist Church just minutes before the funeral was to begin.
According to a person familiar with the situation, Brown brought an entourage of nine people with him to the Newark church and wanted them to sit with them in the family section.
“They were asked to leave,” the person said, referring to the entourage. Brown was not asked to leave, but “he left with the other people,” according to the person, who was not at liberty to discuss the situation publicly.
Brown appeared visibly upset as he left the church and got into a black Cadillac SUV.
via Visibly upset, Bobby Brown leaves Whitney Houston’s funeral | NJ.com.
You know, there are just some moments when you just have to tell it like it is. This here is one of them moments. Before I nuke this overrated piece of trash, named Bobby Brown, verbally into the next century, let me say this — Yes; I watched that funeral of Whitney Houston’s. I watched the entire service from beginning, until the incredibly sad ending, when Whitney’s mother was walking behind the casket of her own daughter, wailing and weeping for her daughter who was taken from her. Even I, the tough as nails type was nearly to tears. The reason is that I had to watch a woman, who is a grandma, having to bury her daughter. Children are support to bury their parents, not the other way around.
The question I have for Mr. Brown is this; why in the name of the Almighty God would he honestly need NINE people to follow him into a funeral of his ex-wife? Mr. Brown, you sir are a classless punk. Mr. Brown did it ever; at any time occur to you, that you did not need all those people to go into the Church with you? However, no, you just had to bring along your gang of friends along with you. To, as always, make a show of yourself. You sir, are a dirty slime ball piece of human excrement. YOU are the reason why Whitney Houston is dead in the first place! YOU are the reason that Whitney Houston was a drug-addicted junkie who could not keep herself straight long enough to record any record. Whitney Houston did those drugs to please YOU! To show just how much you appreciated her doing that, what did you do? You beat her; you mistreated her and generally acted like an ungodly buffoon. So much, in fact, that she ended up having to divorce your sorry self finally.
Then, to add insult to injury after the woman died from the drugs that YOU got her started on, YOU have the god-damned nerve to show up at her funeral and act like a spoiled punk ass brat and when you did not get your way, you leave in a huff! There happens to be a word that some people like to use to describe people like yourself, and it Begins with an N and ends with an R! You should be giving thanks to the almighty God in Heaven that the Huston family has not taken a contract out on your life. I am almost certain that her brothers would like to do this to you. I know I would, if I were them!
In closing, allow me to say this; Bobby Brown, grow up. Get on with your pathetic life and leave the Houston family alone. They have suffered enough and stay away from your daughter, she has already lost her Mother thanks to you, and you want to kill the daughter too? I mean, seriously. Also too, let me say this; let this be a lesson to Christian young women everywhere — stay away from devilish men, like Bobby Brown. If you have been raised in Church, like Whitney, find you a man in the Church and stay there! Do not be messing around with some fool in the world; because this right here is where you will end up, one way, or another — in the graveyard.
Remember this guy who got sent up the river?
Well, it appears now that ol’ Sabu here is not too keen on being the pivot man in the prison circle jerk.
The Story:
Detroit— “Underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab appealed his life sentence Friday, one day after a judge issued the maximum penalty for trying to destroy a Detroit-bound airliner carrying 289 people on Christmas Day 2009.
The notice of appeal was filed in federal court in Detroit.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds sentenced Abdulmutallab to four life terms on Thursday, ending the country’s highest-profile terror case since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“This court has no ability to control his motivation, which appears to be unchanged,” Edmunds said Thursday. “I can control his opportunity to act on those intentions.
“I believe he poses a significant ongoing threat to (the) safety of American citizens everywhere.”
Before being sentenced, Abdulmutallab’s legal adviser, Detroit lawyer Anthony Chambers, argued the mandatory life sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment
via ‘Underwear bomber’ Abdulmutallab appeals life sentence | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com.
Like I wrote in my last entry about this idiot; we should have tried this terrorist puke in a military court. This murderous thug is not a uniformed combatant, he is a terrorist thug, who should be executed by firing squad, or better yet, with a damn rope and a tree. Racism? man, please. 🙄 Anyone who does what this little puke did, should not be affording any sort of respect at all. Least of all any respect of his race. 😡
But, now, as I wrote before, we will have to pay for this puke’s legal defense and pay to feed, clothe and shelter this little puke. Which is morally wrong, considering who and what he is, and what he tried to do. Which was not a ordinary criminal act, but an act of war. But your friendly neighborhood Marxists feel that he deserves the protection of the Constitution of the United States.
It is truly pathetic, it really is; here is hoping that we elect a President in 2012, that sees this threat for what it truly is and not a criminal one.
Shocker! Not. (Via InstaPundit)
Protesters at Friday’s “Occupy CPAC” event, organized by AFL-CIO and the Occupy DC movement, told The Daily Caller that they were paid “sixty bucks a head” to protest outside the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.
One protester told TheDC that all the “Occupy” activists were being paid to protest, and that his union, Sheet Metal Workers Local 100, approached him about the money-making opportunity.
“I have nothing nice to say about Local 100. … They just told me ‘you wanna make sixty bucks? So c’mon,’” the protester said.
Other “Occupy CPAC” protesters were unwilling to speak on camera because they were unaware what they were protesting and what the CPAC event was about.
Allow me to say this; as the son of a retired General Motors worker and retired member of the UAW —- is this is the best that the AFL-CIO can do for a protest? If this is the case, and I do fear that it is — then I do fear for the future of the labor movement. Because this is how lame, desperate — pick a damn adverb — that they have become. The once great AFL-CIO, which stood for the common man and made sure that crony capitalists were held in check; is now nothing more than a casting service for the far liberal left.
Another thing too; if the AFL-CIO is paying people to protest — my question is, what else are they planning on paying people to do? I mean, and I hate to be the one to say it — But these people are a part of the far liberal left, we used to call them communists. Anyhow, what else will they pay people to do? All I am going to say is this; it was a glitter bomb used here here recently on Mitt Romney, I just hope the secret service is up for the job. Because I will say this; in 1970 Walter Reuther‘s plane went down near Black Lake, Michigan. Most union people believe the plane was sabotaged. They also believe that the crony capitalists at the big three were responsible; I disagree with that. I believe the the communists did him in. Because in 1949, Reuther expelled the Communist-backed unions from the CIO. Who is to say, that they did not kill Reuther in an act of revenge? Communists, much like their brothers-in-arms — Muslim Terrorists — are very patient people and will wait for their moment of revenge, years if it takes that long.
Because you have to understand, these people on the far communist left; they know no valor, no morals — nothing. They are power hungry people and they have much invested in Barack Obama and they will stop at nothing to protect him. This is why I worry about whomever becomes the nominee of the GOP. Because in 2008, they had nothing really to lose. In 2012, it is another story; they have a whole bunch to lose. I am not saying that I have any sort of inside knowledge at all. However, I know these people and I know how they play their game. I just hope the GOP, the secret service and everyone else on the right is on their game. Because to be quite honest, in this election; I fear the worst. I don’t know why. But I do. You can call it a gut feeling that I have.
I just hope, for everyone’s sake — that I am wrong. 🙁
I have already written about this one, so before you read below; read here.
The story: (H/T Jazz Shaw)
The $25 billion settlement with banks over foreclosure abuses may result in a wave of home seizures, inflicting short-term pain on delinquent U.S. borrowers while making a long-term housing recovery more likely.
Lenders slowed the pace of foreclosures as they negotiated with attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year over allegations of faulty and fraudulent paperwork used to repossess homes. With yesterday’s agreement, banks are likely to resume property seizures.
“The best thing about the settlement, frankly, is that it will be done,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Seattle-based Zillow Inc. (Z), a provider of home-sales data. “The shadow of the settlement hung over the market for a year now.”
The backlog of foreclosures has trapped homeowners in properties they can no longer afford, depressed neighborhood prices by increasing the number of abandoned homes and led banks to tighten mortgage credit standards because of uncertainty about the cost of their potential obligations. Foreclosure starts fell 46 percent in December from October 2010, when the investigation into the so-called robo-signing of mortgage documentation began, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc.
via Foreclosures to Climb in U.S. Before Bank Deal Helps Housing Market Heal – Bloomberg.
At the risk of sounding like, of all people, Ron Paul; This is what happens when Government gets involved with the private market. It gets screwed up and attempts to fix it, screw it up even worse! Let this be a lesson to our Government and all involved; do not involve yourself in private markets, like housing. It only messes things up. The sad thing is, a whole bunch of people had to suffer, because a group of liberal elitists decided that a tried and true system just had to be tweeked to give to the “have-nots” and from what I read above, the suffering is just beginning.
You can read about this here, here, here and here.
First of all, let me say this; this issue here, above all of the others, is why I packed it in with the Democratic Party. On top of all of the class warfare, class resentment, racial resentment and everything else; was the realization that I made, that the Democratic Party, starting in 1973 and again in 1993 literally rigged the system to fail. This was by loosing credit restrictions to allow people, who had no business even getting loans, to get credit so easily.
Then once the system failed, the Government, started by George W. Bush in 2008 with tarp loans and the bailing out banks that were “Too big to fail.” Not to mention the fact that the Republicans ripped out regulations that made the whole thing like one million percent worse and when the Republican Congress received a warning that the whole thing was going to collapse, what did they do? They held a hearing and the CEO of Freddy and Fannie played the RACE CARD, they retreated! 😡 I won’t even get into the stupidity of the Federal Reserve, which really made some seriously idiotic mistakes.
Then instead of Obama being smart and saying, “We’re not picking favorites, we are going to allow the market to correct itself.” Instead, he continued the bailouts and even spent more on top of that. Not the mention his attempt to destroy our private healthcare system.
Anyhow, this settlement is not perfect; in fact, it stinks and someone has given a bullet-point list as to why.
This is via Naked Capitalism:
Here are the top twelve reasons why this deal stinks:
1. We’ve now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It’s $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It’s a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law.
2. That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. The mortgage principal writedowns are guaranteed to come almost entirely from securitized loans, which means from investors, which in turn means taxpayers via Fannie and Freddie, pension funds, insurers, and 401 (k)s. Refis of performing loans also reduce income to those very same investors.
3. That $5 billion divided among the big banks wouldn’t even represent a significant quarterly hit. Freddie and Fannie putbacks to the major banks have been running at that level each quarter.
4. That $20 billion actually makes bank second liens sounder, so this deal is a stealth bailout that strengthens bank balance sheets at the expense of the broader public.
5. The enforcement is a joke. The first layer of supervision is the banks reporting on themselves. The framework is similar to that of the OCC consent decrees implemented last year, which Adam Levitin and yours truly, among others, decried as regulatory theater.
6. The past history of servicer consent decrees shows the servicers all fail to comply. Why? Servicer records and systems are terrible in the best of times, and their systems and fee structures aren’t set up to handle much in the way of delinquencies. As Tom Adams has pointed out in earlier posts, servicer behavior is predictable when their portfolios are hit with a high level of delinquencies and defaults: they cheat in all sorts of ways to reduce their losses.
7. The cave-in Nevada and Arizona on the Countrywide settlement suit is a special gift for Bank of America, who is by far the worst offender in the chain of title disaster (since, according to sworn testimony of its own employee in Kemp v. Countrywide, Countrywide failed to comply with trust delivery requirements). This move proves that failing to comply with a consent degree has no consequences but will merely be rolled into a new consent degree which will also fail to be enforced. These cases also alleged HAMP violations as consumer fraud violations and could have gotten costly and emboldened other states to file similar suits not just against Countrywide but other servicers, so it was useful to the other banks as well.
8. If the new Federal task force were intended to be serious, this deal would have not have been settled. You never settle before investigating. It’s a bad idea to settle obvious, widespread wrongdoing on the cheap. You use the stuff that is easy to prove to gather information and secure cooperation on the stuff that is harder to prove. In Missouri and Nevada, the robosigning investigation led to criminal charges against agents of the servicers. But even though these companies were acting at the express direction and approval of the services, no individuals or entities higher up the food chain will face any sort of meaningful charges.
9. There is plenty of evidence of widespread abuses that appear not to be on the attorney generals’ or media’s radar, such as servicer driven foreclosures and looting of investors’ funds via impermissible and inflated charges. While no serious probe was undertaken, even the limited or peripheral investigations show massive failures (60% of documents had errors in AGs/Fed’s pathetically small sample). Similarly, the US Trustee’s office found widespread evidence of significant servicer errors in bankruptcy-related filings, such as inflated and bogus fees, and even substantial, completely made up charges. Yet the services and banks will suffer no real consequences for these abuses.
10. A deal on robosiginging serves to cover up the much deeper chain of title problem. And don’t get too excited about the New York, Massachusetts, and Delaware MERS suits. They put pressure on banks to clean up this monstrous mess only if the AGs go through to trial and get tough penalties. The banks will want to settle their way out of that too. And even if these cases do go to trial and produce significant victories for the AGs, they still do not address the problem of failures to transfer notes correctly.
11. Don’t bet on a deus ex machina in terms of the new Federal foreclosure task force to improve this picture much. If you think Schneiderman, as a co-chairman who already has a full time day job in New York, is going to outfox a bunch of DC insiders who are part of the problem, I have a bridge I’d like to sell to you.
12. We’ll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Investors in mortgage-backed securities, who know that services have been screwing them for years, will be hung out to dry and will likely never return to a private MBS market, since the problems won’t ever be fixed. This settlement has not only revealed the residential mortgage market to be too big to fail, but puts it on long term, perhaps permanent, government life support.
As we’ve said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn’t you and me. It’s bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners.
I have zero to add to this. The only thing I will ask is, who’s paying for all of this? Answer: You and Me — in Taxes. 😡
This is why we need a new political Party to get in there and fix this asinine morass.
Others: (All Liberals BTW…) American Prospect, Washington Post, US Politics, FT Alphaville, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*, Wall Street Journal, Time, The Huffington Post, Swampland, ThinkProgress, Prairie Weather, Firedoglake, Business Insider, Financial Times and Discourse.net, ThinkProgress, The Huffington Post, Washington Monthly, Washington Post, Firedoglake, Rolling Stone, The Big Picture, Business Insider, Hit & Run, The Democratic Daily, Zandar Versus The Stupid, Feministing, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*, No More Mister Nice Blog, Blog of New Orleans, Gambit, emptywheel, The Political Carnival, DealBook, The Page, Booman Tribune and Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, FORECLOSURE FRAUD, Business Insider and Calculated Risk, Washington Post, Daily Kos and Firedoglake, The Atlantic Online
