Chuck Baldwin minces no words about Paul Ryan

I have to like Chuck Baldwin, he does not mince words:

It has happened again. We go through this every four years, and every four years the vast majority of “conservatives” fall for it. This is such a broken record. What did Forrest Gump say: “Stupid is as stupid does”? And wasn’t it P.T. Barnum who said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”? Well, here we go again.

Neocon RINO George H.W. Bush picks “conservative” Dan Quayle. “Conservative” G.W. Bush picks neocon RINO Dick Cheney. Neocon RINO John McCain picks “conservative” Sarah Palin. Now, neocon RINO Mitt Romney picks “conservative” Paul Ryan. As long as there is one “conservative” on the ticket, mushy-headed “conservatives” across the country will go into a gaga, starry-eyed, hypnotic trance in support of the Republican ticket. I’m convinced that if Lucifer, himself, was the GOP Presidential candidate, he would get the support of the Religious Right and Republican “conservatives” as long as he selected a reputed “conservative” to join his ticket. And, by the way, the notable “conservative” wouldn’t think twice about joining such a ticket, either, I’m convinced.

Let’s just get this on the record: since 1960, there have only been two Presidential nominees (from the two major parties) who were not controlled by the globalist elitists. One was a Democrat, John F. Kennedy; the other was a Republican, Ronald Reagan. Kennedy was shot and killed; Reagan was shot. Every other President, Democrat or Republican, has been totally controlled, which is why none of them have done diddly-squat to make a difference in the direction of the country. On the issues that really matter, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are just more of the same!

via Chuck Baldwin — Paul Ryan: More Of The Same.

He goes on to say that Ron Paul is the only one; and I disagree with that. However, I will say this; he is right about Romney and Ryan. Which is I am voting for:

Goode/Clymer in 2012

But voting for anything else is simply Anti-American

Once again, Dick Cheney is trying to start a civil war

First it was Iraq, now it is with the Palin supporters. Whew, ol’ boy can’t just say, “yeah, she’s okay.” Oh no, he’s just got to insult every darned Conservative feminist in America. 😯

The Video Via ABC:

Did you happen to hear a rather loud thud sound right after he said the words, “She was not ready?” That was George W. Bush passing out dead cold in the floor. I mean, the poor man has spent the last 3 years trying to build the library and what’s left of his legacy and reputation….and what does ol’ Darth Vader do? This. Memo to Darth Cheney: YOU.ARE.NOT.HELPING….. 🙄

…and of course, Conservatives 4 Palin went into existential meltdown over this:

Apparently, Palin’s not “ready” to sit in an administration for eight years which adds 5 trillion dollars to our unpaid debt basically demoralizing the spirit of conservatism leading to four years of Barack Obama. Cheney was “ready” for that, wasn’t he?

Palin’s not “ready” to engage in cronyism which dictates who she’d appoint to lifetime positions on the Supreme Court or to head federal emergency agencies like FEMA. Bush & Cheney were “ready” for that, weren’t they?

Palin is “ready” to balance a budget – since she did it in Alaska.

Palin is “ready” to increase benefits for our esteemed elders while cutting out wasteful spending existing all across our federal government – since she did similar things in Alaska.

Palin is “ready” to call out entrenched special interests like she did when she served up a little justice to the Republican Party’s good old boys and their dealings with big oil. She did that in Alaska, too.

Palin’s “ready” to unabashedly call out Barack Obama. This includes pointing out his past associations, his reckless squandering of billions of our dollars to pay back his Wall Street friends (just as Bush/Cheney once did), and his plans to whip Americans into Greece-like big-government submission. This is in contrast to the establishment’s plans to hold back.

Palin’s “ready” to endorse countless candidates for the Congress. She’s been successful at using her enormous grassroots influence to pull a great deal of them across the finish line.

Palin’s not ready to fall in line with the establishment. Until any candidate (including our perceived “front-runner”) demonstrates a full willingness to truly unify with the party’s grassroots, don’t count on her to make deals behind closed doors or hold high-priced fundraisers at her home.

Considering everything Bush & Company were “ready” for, it’s no wonder why Barack Obama was ever put in the position of becoming President of our great Republic. Now of course, he must be fired.

But after observing the behavior of Cheney, Sununu, and other Romney surrogates, it might serve the interest of the American people to ask whether or not Romney is truly “ready” to do that considering the company he chooses to keep.

[…..]

Very disappointed in Dick Cheney, especially considering what he knows first hand about media and false narratives.

I’d also like to add some comments made….those who suggest Cheney has a right to his opinion and how we have to unite. They need to only listen to their own advice. Of course Cheney has a right to his opinion, but “uniting” involves telling the truth and judging one on the basis of their record and their conviction. Nobody can claim to fighting for this country to the degree Sarah Palin has since 2008 and nobody can deny her record of accomplishment. He frankly owes her an apology considering who our opponent is supposed to be.

You know that whole thing about “hell hath no fury”? Here it is.

Popcorn? Popcorn hell, this is dinner theater! 😛 😀 😆

Mojo reports that Mitt Romney worked at company that disposed of dead aborted babies

I knew something like this would come up!

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate’s reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney’s exit from Bain.

Read the rest at Mother Jones.

This will not help Romney one bit. I could sit here and yowl on about how much Romney likes money, more than Babies. But, honestly, I do not know that to be true and I just cannot and will not liable a man who I know nothing about. I did that sort of thing with Bush, when I was on the left, and you know what? I looked like an idiot for it. So, I am not playing the left’s game for them. I just believe that Christians would like to know about this, which is why I am publishing it.

Others: Washington Post, Salon, Cognitive Dissidence, PERRspectives, ThinkProgress, TBogg, Daily Kos, New York Magazine, Alan Colmes’ Liberaland, US Politics, Mother Jones and The Huffington Post

Former Ron Paul Ally confronts Paul on double dipping on expenses

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. 😯

Hope and Change: Obama Administration throws in towel on corruption case

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! 🙄

Gov. Rick Snyder sells out to the Republican establishment

I voted for the man, I now regret that choice.

In a Detroit News op-ed today, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced his support of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the contest for the GOP presidential nomination.

Romney, who is campaigning in Michigan ahead of the Feb. 28 primary here, faces a tough challenge by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Ahead of a Grand Rapids visit Wednesday, Romney’s campaign announced a list of endorsements from other Michigan Republicans.

via Rick Snyder: ‘Mitt Romney is the man for the job’ | MLive.com.

Good luck in your reelection bid Mr. Governor. You certainly do not represent my views. I will not make that mistake again. Here is hoping that you will be voted out. Just more living proof that the so-called “Tea Party” was nothing more than an abject failure that really did not change a thing. At least not in the Republican Party.

Why I cannot stand Mitt Romney

For this crap right here:

The Obama Administration’s $85 billion auto bailout in 2009 was “crony capitalism on a grand scale,” according to Mitt Romney.

In an opinion editorial published today by The Detroit News, the Republican presidential hopeful not only attacks the way the administration handled the bailout of General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, but argues that the United Auto Workers union benefited from the bankruptcies in wake of contributing millions to Democrats and Barack Obama’s campaign.

“Thus, the outcome of the managed bankruptcy proceedings was dictated by the terms of the bailout,” Romney writes. “Chrysler’s ‘secured creditors,’ who in the normal course of affairs should have been first in line for compensation, were given short shrift, while at the same time, the UAWs’ union-boss-controlled trust fund received a 55 percent stake in the firm.”

via Romney: Auto bailout was ‘crony capitalism,’ taxpayers should get reimbursed | MLive.com.

I mean, the man is a serial flip-flopper, to the point when Jennifer Granholm, of all people, had to point this out. Now he is trying to appeal to the wealthy Republicans by capping the auto industry. The dude is a two-bit phony and I believe Michigan is getting hip to this. Which is why he is failing in the polls here. I am not a fan of Santorum either; but at least he is honest about what he actually is. But, no matter, neither of them will win to Obama. Which is why I believe we need a brokered Convention in the Republican Party. So we can put a real Conservative in there, a Tea Party candidate and not some beltway veteran.

Bloomberg: Bank deal with make foreclosures to rise

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.

Fox Business Network Drops Judge Napolitano

First they got rid of Glenn Beck and now Fox News Channel’s Business network gives Judge Napolitano the axe.

Alternate headline: Fox News goes back to its Neoconservative roots and kicks the Paleoconservative voices out.

The Story:

In a surprise announcement Thursday afternoon, the Fox Business Network announced a major makeover of its primetime lineup. The new look slate will feature re-airs of The Willis Report, Cavuto, and Lou Dobbs Tonight, while ending the runs of FreedomWatch with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Power & Money with David Asman, and Follow the Money with Eric Bolling. In addition, the network will be developing a new show featuring Melissa Francis, which will eventually air at 5 p.m., bumping Gerri Willis‘ live show to 8 p.m. (Willis will air live at 5 p.m. with re-airs at 8 p.m. until the second quarter).

via Fox Business Network Drops Bolling, Napolitano Shows In Primetime Shuffle | Mediaite.

I did not always agree with Judge Napolitano, who is a Ron Paul supporter. But I will say this; he has in the past called out the Wilsonian Trotskyite crowd for what they truly are and I commend him for that. I wish the Judge all the best and if I were him, I would be heading over to Glenn Beck’s network and trying to make a deal. Fox News never was one to stray too far away from they consider to be “Mainstream” Conservative thought. Paleoconservatives and libertarians were only there to be, like liberals, to be made sport of. They do it Bob Beckle and also to John Stossel. If I were John Stossel, I would be making sure my ship was secure, if not; I would be looking elsewhere too.

Again, it is a shame that this is going on, but that is the business of media; they follow the winds and when the winds change, networks have to react.

My thoughts on the mortgage settlement

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

Tag: Crony Capitalism