Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab appeals his sentence

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.

Terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab sentenced to 4 life sentences plus 50 years.

I wish it were the death penalty, but this is good:

DETROIT — The Nigerian man who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner with explosives concealed in his underwear on Christmas Day in 2009 was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison by a federal judge who said his crime and subsequent lack of remorse demanded the maximum possible punishment.
Prosecutors sought a life sentence for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who pled guilty to federal charges in connection with a failed bombing attempt.
The man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who pleaded guilty in October and admitted to working on behalf of Al Qaeda, shouted “Allah Akbar,” or “God is great,” five times during the sentencing hearing. He asserted that Muslims were “proud to kill in the name of God, and that is what God told us to do in the Koran.
via Would-Be Plane Bomber Sentenced to Life – NYTimes.com.

So, great, The United States of America is now going to have to feed, cloth, and shelter this little cretin for the rest of his life. This is why this trial should have been in military court, where he would have been sentenced to death. It would have been cheaper to do; than to do this here.

Here is the money quote:

Mr. Abdulmutallab, who wore a white T-shirt and tan pants, spoke for about three minutes. He claimed that Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders who have been killed “are alive and shall be victorious by God’s grace.” He also said terrorist attacks would continue “until the Jews are driven out of Palestine.”

Frankly, I am shocked that the NYT even bothered to include that quote. But that right there is the crux of why we have Terrorism at all; because of our support of Israel. Someone needs to show Ronnie Paul that quote too. Because his bat-shit insane position on terrorism is the narrative of the left.

I have a strange new respect for Alan Dershowitz

I am very glad to see that someone on the left is taking a stand against the far leftists in the Democratic Party.

Unfortunately, I cannot embed the sound clip here, but I suggest that you go over and listen to the interview. (Hat Tip to Andrew Brietbart)

Here’s the story over at the Daily Caller:

Media Matters could become the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of 2012 for the Obama campaign if the White House and the Democratic Party don’t clearly distance themselves from the organization.
“Well I think if swing voters in the pro-Israel community had any idea how extreme Media Matters was on issues of Israel and supporters of Israel, they would regard Media Matters as another, you know, Rev. Wright,” Dershowitz told The Daily Caller.
“And for many, many in the pro-Israel community, it would be a game changer.”
Dershowitz went so far as to suggest that Media Matters’s rhetoric on Israel, particularly from Media Matters Action Network senior fellow M.J. Rosenberg, is similar to what one would find on a neo-Nazi website.
“When I started reading their stuff it sounded like the kind of stuff you see on neo-Nazi websites,” Dershowitz said. “Or on Hezbollah-supporter websites. It is so extremist. The thing that shocked me is that anybody regarded it as mainstream.”
Media Matters did not respond to a request by TheDC for comment.
Dershowitz said he is not on Media Matters’s email list and is only aware of the language they use when discussing Israel and Israel’s supporters because of emails sent to him from what he identifies as a neo-Nazi website, ReportersNotebook.

“You know where I get their stuff? I read their stuff mostly on a neo-Nazi website that sends it to me,” he explained. “Somehow I am on their mailing list. I am not on Media Matters’s mailing list. But I tend to read Media Matters articles when they’re sent to me by a neo-Nazi website.”
The man behind ReportersNotebook, Michael Santomauro, denied that his email or blog is neo-Nazi in orientation, though he admits to questioning the narrative of the Holocaust and says he believes that Israel is a fascist state.
Though Dershowitz says he doesn’t think the Obama administration and Media Matters are close, he believes the White House has to clearly distance itself from the organization because Democrats like him cannot exist within a tent that tolerates Media Matters.
“The Obama administration cannot have Media Matters and me or people who look to me for advice,” Dershowitz told TheDC. “We cannot be in the same tent. The tent is not big enough to include us.”

I did some poking around on this Michael Santomauro guy. He either works for or owns this place here. He has some interesting views on Israel, 9/11 and Jews. He is essentially what I was accused of being; a Jew hater. His little attempt to come off sounding like some sort of academic does not fool me one iota.

What one must understand is this; the reason why this holocaust revisionist was reposting items that Media Matters was publishing, is that much of the far left and people like this person, agrees on their positions on Israel. He is correct in saying that he is not a Neo-Nazi, he is not; he is one of the growing numbers of people who are anti-Israel. This man is, frankly, one of David Duke’s types of people. Maybe not so much into the white sheets and hoods, but the Jewish hatred and bigotry is still there.

Sadly, there are those kinds of people on the right as well. One example can be found here. They call themselves “radical traditionalists.” I like to call them “Hi-Brow” bigots. They are Anti-Religion, Anti-Israel, and very anti-Jew. They speak glowingly of Hitler and Nazi Germany as well. This goes well beyond the Paleoconservatives/neoconservatives divide. This is Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan’s philosophy on steroids. They are in the same camp as Lew Rockwell and his ilk. Haters they are; and somehow they claim to be the “real” libertarians and those at places like Reason magazine are the phonies.

I was very reluctantly put the libertarian and constitutionalist party’s logos back on my blog, after disowning the GOP’s candidates; this here, of what I have written, is the main reason of that reluctance. Because there are just some within the libertarian ranks that are just straight up haters, and as I have written before, I just cannot deal with that nonsense. Further, the people that I have written of here are still fighting a battle that we lost long ago. What they are fighting against, is the elimination of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant class of man. The problem is, we WASP’s for short; lost that battle eons ago. What bothers me is the fact that these people actually believe that hatred is going to change anything.

Hating on Jews, blacks and Latinas are not going to make them ago away. It is simply going to make you look like some paranoid idiot that fears those that do not look, act or have the money that you do. Maybe it is because I happen to be a Christian myself, is why I never quit understood the rational of these people; or it is because I grew up here in Michigan and was raised not to judge people by the color of their skin.

Maybe it is because I was born with something that seems to be lacking among these people — common sense.

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Is this the best that the AFL-CIO can do?

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.
via Occupy CPAC | Union | Paid | The Daily Caller.

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. 🙁

Daniel Larison to Syria: Don’t look to Kosovo

Interesting posting. Go read.

Catholics are not the only ones raising cain about the healthcare issue

The Baptists are raising a stink about it too.

There is this:

WASHINGTON (BP) — The issue at the center of the swelling controversy over the Obama administration’s refusal to protect the conscience rights of employers in its “contraceptive mandate” is “about as basic as it gets,” especially for Baptists, says Richard Land.
“Does the government have the right to intrude on the consciences of people to force them to pay for that which they find unconscionable? This goes contrary to our tradition in this country and contrary to our understanding of the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections,” Land said Feb. 9 in explaining what is at the heart of the debate.
“In my opinion, a Baptist needs to take a stand on this issue. Our Baptist forefathers went to prison and died for the freedoms that we have, and now it’s our responsibility in the providence of God to defend these freedoms lest they be taken away by government fiat,” said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
via Baptist Press – Land: Obama mandate is a Baptist issue – News with a Christian Perspective.

Then there is this, also via Baptist Press:

“I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a government mandate that violates what God commands us to do. Would you? Acts 5:29,” author and pastor Rick Warren wrote on his Twitter account Feb. 7 before adding, “I’m not a Catholic but I stand in 100% solidarity with my brothers & sisters to practice their belief against govt pressure.”

Like I wrote earlier about the Catholics; my advice to my fellow Baptists, do not settle for anything other than a FULL and Complete exemption to this rule. I have to admire the Baptists and other Christian who are showing their boldness in this very important issue. Although, I really wished they would have shown the same sort of boldness, on the issue of the Iraq War. But, at this point, I will take any kind of boldness I can get. 😀

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.

Retreat: White House to offer ‘Accommodation’ to religious groups on contraception issue

That was quick….

The Video:

Ed Husain: US must stay out of Syria

A very reasonable argument:

In reality, this would mean the United States would once again carry the heavy burden of war. In NATO’s recent operation in Libya, the United States provided 75% of the reconnaissance data, surveillance, intelligence and refueling planes. Syria is not Libya, and NATO without the United States is not up to the job.
The Arab League is no match for a brutal Syrian regime backed by Russia, China and Iran.
In essence, therefore, we must stop pretending about NATO or the Arab League intervening and accept that it is not “international intervention,” but U.S. military intervention that is being sought in yet another Muslim-majority country. The Muslim dimension is important because the lessons of Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan are that, invariably, intervention leads to occupation, which leads to varying degrees of Islamist radicalization
via West must not intervene militarily in Syria – CNN.com.

I would suggest you go read the rest of that, as it is a very well-reasoned argument against the United States getting involved in the Syria conflict. Now watch the Trotskyite Wilsonian Conservative war hawks tear this man to shreds for daring to say that we should not get involved.

The truth is folks; we are broke as a Nation. We just checked out of one Country and we are trying like heck to get out of another one. Going into this conflict would be, quite bluntly, crazy. Here is hoping that Obama listens to this reason and does not get involved. Syria is not Libya; and it damned sure is not Iraq. Different Nations, Different battles and a bunch of different issues here. Because of this, it would be in our best interest to stay out of it.

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.

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