I'm outta here

Leaving for Vegas at 0:dark:early. Will post on the repeatable stuff when I return.

Little Johnny Gets OBAMA!

Obama was visiting a primary school and he visited one of the classes.


They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.


The teacher asked Obama if he would like to lead the discussion on the word 'tragedy'. So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a 'tragedy'.


One little boy stood up and offered: 'If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a tragedy.
'

'No,' said Obama, 'that would be an accident.
'

A little girl raised her hand: 'If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy.
'

'I'm afraid not,' explained Obama. 'That's what we would call great loss.
'

The room went silent. No other children volunteered.


Obama searched the room.


'Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?'

Finally at the back of the room, Little Johnny raised his hand...

In a quiet voice he said: 'If the plane carrying you and Mrs. Obama was struck by a 'friendly fire' missile and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy.
'

'Fantastic!' exclaimed Obama.'That's right.


And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?'

'Well,' says the boy, 'It has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn't be a great loss.and it probably wouldn't be a ****ing accident either'.

Twas the Night Before Elections

Twas the night before elections
And all through the town
Tempers were flaring
Emotions all up and down!

I, in my bathrobe
With a cat in my lap
Had cut off the TV
Tired of political crap.

When all of a sudden
There arose such a noise
I peered out of my window
Saw Obama and his boys

They had come for my wallet
They wanted my pay
To give to the others
Who had not worked a day!

He snatched up my money
And quick as a wink
Jumped back on his bandwagon
As I gagged from the stink

He then rallied his henchmen
Who were pulling his cart
I could tell they were out
To tear my country apart!

‘On Fannie, on Freddie,
On Biden and Ayers!
On Acorn, On Pelosi’
He screamed at the pairs!

They took off for his cause
And as he flew out of sight
I heard him laugh at the nation
Who wouldn’t stand up and fight!

So I leave you to think
On this one final note-
IF YOU DONT WANT SOCIALISM
GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!

I can't figure it out

Honestly when the nominations started I took the time to listen to Obamas speeches. I really wanted to hear what this guy had to say. On the surface he was well spoken and charismatic. Then I really started listening to the substance of what he was saying. It didn't take long to see him for what he really is. Is half of this country really that ignorant to see where he will take us? Sure John McCain isn't the top choice for me, but Obama is the wrong choice for this nation.
I envision this country as being a strong United Country, much the way our grandparents were in the WWII generation. We have fallen. There is too much reliance on the gov't to support us, and not enough self reliance. The hippy lettuce smokers of the 60's have grown old and ruined multiple generations that can't do for themselves.
Grow a backbone America, or suffer your demise.

Get your guns now

Gun sales up recently

Don't think for a second I haven't been shopping. If that communist, socialist pig Obama gets elected I will have what I need to defend me and mine. Don't like guns? Good, shrink into your little corner and let those of us who know what to do with them apply them when needed.

Sorry libs, you are on your own since you voted for this a-hole. This country will be in a world of hurt, and only the strong will survive, while you help support the good for nothings in the new socialist gov't.

First they take away the means to defend yourself, then they take the rest of your rights. If I own it already, he ain't getting it back!

The second amendment is in jeopardy.

This Marxist idiot wants to take my hard earned money and distribute it to the useless vermin. Bullshit, I work too damn hard for my money and way of life for my family.

Anyone have living parents that may have a nest egg to pass on when they die? Obama is going to tax it at 45% in a new death tax. Don't believe it? Get off your butts and do some checking, because the lame stream media isn't going to out their candidate.

Thats how the fight started.......

When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her someplace expensive.
I took her to a gas station.

And that's how the fight started....
**************************************** **********
I tried to talk my wife into buying a case of Miller Light for $14.95.
Instead, she bought a jar of cold cream for $7.95.
I told her the beer would make her look better at night than the cold cream.

And that's how the fight started...
**************************************** **********
After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security.
The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver's license to verify my age.
I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home.
I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.
The woman said, 'Unbutton your shirt'. So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair.
She said, 'That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me' and she processed my Social Security application.
When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.
She said, 'You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too'.

And that's how the fight started.....
**************************************** **********
My wife and I were sitting at a table at my high school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table.
My wife asked, 'Do you know her?' 'Yes,' I sighed, 'She's my old girlfriend.
I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn't been sober since.'
'My Gosh!' says my wife, 'Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?'

And that's how the fight started.....
**************************************** **********
I rear-ended a car this morning.
So, there we were alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car.
You know how sometimes you just get so stressed and little things just seem funny?
Yeah, well I couldn't believe it.... he was a DWARF!!!
He stormed over to my car, looked up at me, and shouted, 'I AM NOT HAPPY!!!'
So, I looked down at him and said, 'Well, then which one are you?'

And that's how the fight started.....
**************************************** **********
I took my wife to a restaurant.
The waiter, for some reason, took my order first.
'I'll have the strip steak, medium rare, please.'
He said, 'Aren't you worried about the mad cow?'
'Nah, she can order for herself.'

And that's how the fight started.....
***************************************************************
Wife - "Thanks for not laughing at my weight gain anymore"
Husband - "I don't think its funny anymore"

And thats how the fight started
*******************************************************************
A husband got home from work one day and his wife is railing at him, seems he forgot their wedding anniversary. So she tells him, "Tomorrow there better be something in the driveway that goes from 0 to 200 in 2 seconds flat!"
So tomorrow comes and she spies a small package in the driveway. She retrieves the package and inside she finds a bathroom scale.

And that is how the fight started....

Real letter, real American

Mr. Obama,
Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself.

While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me "Cory the well driller". I am a 54 year old high school graduate. I didn't go to college like you, I was too ready to go "conquer the world" when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80's oil boom. I didn't get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawn shop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start as a result of privilege. They are the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly. From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn't afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10 year old, 1/2 ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck).

A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs. Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time... $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D.. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.

I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn't work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine. No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.
2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business.

A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.
Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so I and an employee (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers' pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers' product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow. No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that's ok, I didn't expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.
Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months.

This should work out, but if it doesn't it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our countrys’ (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. You see, at the very time when I couldn't get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It's funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.

You see, Mr. Obama, I'm the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I'm the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I'm the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn’t want to take a risk, and would not demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I'm the guy you characterize as "the Americans who can afford it the most" that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution "to spread the wealth" to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture.

I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What's worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.
What is so terribly sad about this is this.
America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self reliance, self motivation, self determination, self discipline, personal betterment, hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach of every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn't it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever expanding dependence on government. What's remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn't need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.

You see, I know because I've had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.
Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I've seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce “politically motivated”), you averaged less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else’s money you are giving to them. I won’t say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you and Joe Biden… combined (don’t you just hate goggle?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.

In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.
God help us...
Cory Miller
just a ordinary, extraordinary American, the way a lot of Americans used to be.
P.S. Yes, Mr. Obama, I am a real American... www.cmillerdrilling.com

What kind of Dog are You?

You Are a Bullmastiff

You are confident, reasonable, and very calm. Nothing shakes you up. It's likely that you were a bit wild when you were younger, but you've gotten that out of your system. The only time you get aggressive is when someone tries to threaten or harm you in some way. There's a little bit of wolf underneath all that sheep's clothing!

What Breed of Dog Are You?

Ashley Sharpshooter

I got word yesterday that my 14 year old niece Ashley went hunting with her dad Scott, and 3 hours into the hunt she got her 1st Elk. My reply to the text message was "Ashley F'N Palin". Hey they own guns, they must be right wing republican wackos too. Actually to get Scott started after a few beers is the best entertainment around, even for libs.
Ashley attends Deer Valley High School in Glendale Az. She is on the cheer squad and involved in student gov't. She is my sister Angela's only child, and obviously the pride and joy of her dad Scott.

How close to Communism do you want to get?

Obama a Marxist?

Even Saul Alinsky's son sees the resemblance

Joe the Plumber

What the hell is the medias problem. The man asks the Savior a simple question about his proposed tax plan. John McCain utilizes this information in the debates, and the red diaper doper baby left wing media goes into full CIA operative mode on this mans life.
For the record, you don't have to have a plumbers license when working under your boss's license. This license will be necessary IF he buys the business, not to ask about the effects of the Obama plan for socialism.
The media has now reported more information concerning Joe the Plumbers background than they have of the Obamination.
Has the mid-stream pissing media said a word about all the fraudulent campaign contributions to Obama, HELL NO.

Yes. Ayers is a terrorist!!

Yes, according to "Plugs" Joe Biden, Obama will be tested by rogue nations within 6 months if elected. Anyone here want to be used in that test, I thought not.

If Obama gets elected we will surely become the Obam-ination

Obamas Marxist Agenda

If there was any doubt that Barack Obama is a Marxist, his comment about spreading the wealth should dispel any doubt. This guy is a walking stream of consciousness. All his beliefs are coming out of his mouth at every turn. Just listen to him try to shed his acquaintances (Ayers, Wright, etc) and to deny his history (Community Organizer and Trainer for ACORN. Meanwhile his supporters will ask you to disbelieve your ears and your eyes about what Obama is about. Pathetic and dangerous.

His tax plan, while on the surface sounds great is nothing more than welfare which will increase government spending. What he isn't fully explaining is that of the 95% who will receive a tax cut, 40% have no tax liability to begin with. Little Suzie rotten crotch can go out every weekend, screw 5 different guys, get pregnant, have kids, and work 20 hours a week. She will receive a tax credit, even though she paid zero taxes. She will live in section 8 housing, and have her daycare and medical subsidized. Meanwhile "Joe the Plumber" starts his small business which will produce over $250k a year, just so Obama can attempt to pay for 65 million Suzie's across this country. Joe's business will fold, because he has to raise his service rates to cover the costs for fuel, and mandatory health care.

Payments to people that don't pay taxes are not refunds, they are welfare, or as Obama recently stated a 'spreading of wealth'. When he rolls back the Bush tax cuts the standard deduction will be less, the marriage tax penalty will be back, and the tax rates will be back to 15/39% instead of the current 10/36%. So Obama is only playing word games with "TAX CUT ON THE RICH". Everyone will see an increase except those that do not pay taxes. Also, with Obamas tax plan, the number of people that do not pay taxes will be reduced. Add to all these tax increases, Harry Reid is planning to reinstate the offshore drilling ban, this will increase the price we pay for gas, and therefore, everything else we purchase. Pelosi is planning to call Congress into session if Obama is elected with the intent of spending $300 billion right off the bat. She was against the Bush economic package last year because she said it would hurt the economy (DID NOT)so now with the crisis she wants to pull another?

While the Bush administration is not blameless for our current market problems, it is still a fact that Obamas spread the wealth socialist ideologies created the sub prime lending crisis. If the Democrats take control of the Executive branch and maintain the House and Senate, there will be no checks and balances, just more big government run amok.

Swimming Hole

An elderly man in West Virginia had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back. It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe pits and some apple and peach trees.

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while and look it over. He grabbed a Five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit.

As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women Skinny-dipping in his pond.

He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end. One of the women shouted to him, ''we're not coming out until you leave!''

The old man frowned, ''I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked.'' Holding the bucket up he said, ''I'm here to feed the alligator.''

Democrat fingerprints are all over "this"

You cant fix the cancer of socialism that has caused all this with more socialism. You only make it far worse and are only delaying the inevitable.

The capitalistic system by its very nature always corrects itself, but the political tyrants will never allow it, and the shameless socialist lunatics on the left and those infected on the right will continue to deny it.


Dominic Lawson: Democrat fingerprints are all over the financial crisis.

Of all the characteristics of a successful politician, none is more essential than bare-faced cheek. Never has this been more evident than in the past fortnight, as senior Democrat members of the US legislature have sought to lay all the blame for the country's financial crisis on the executive arm of Government and Wall Street.

Neither of these two institutions is blameless – far from it. Yet when I see such senior Democrats as Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, play the part of avenging angels – well, I can only stand in silent awe at the sheer tight-bottomed nerve of it. These are men with sphincters of steel.

What is the proximate cause of the collapse of confidence in the world's banks? Millions of improvident loans to American house buyers. Which organisations were on their own responsible for guaranteeing half of this $12 trillion market? Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the so-called Government Sponsored Enterprises which last month were formally nationalised to prevent their immediate and catastrophic collapse. Now, who do you think were among the leading figures blocking all the earlier attempts by President Bush – and other Republicans – to bring these lending behemoths under greater regulatory control? Step forward, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

In September 2003 the Bush administration launched a measure to bring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under stricter regulatory control, after a report by outside investigators established that they were not adequately hedging against risks and that Fannie Mae in particular had scandalously mis-stated its accounts. In 2006, it was revealed that Fannie Mae had overstated its earnings – to which its senior executives' bonuses were linked – by a stunning $9.3billion. Between 1998 and 2003, Fannie Mae's executive chairman, Franklin Raines, picked up over $90m in bonuses and stock options.

Yet Barney Frank and his chums blocked all Bush's attempts to put a rein on Raines. During the House Financial Services Committee hearing following Bush's initiative, Frank declared: "The more people exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness [at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae], the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially." His colleague on the committee, the California Democrat Maxine Walters, said: "There were nearly a dozen hearings where we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and particularly at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr Franklin Raines."

When Mr Raines himself was challenged by the Republican Christopher Shays, to the effect that his ratio of capital to assets (that is, mortgages) of 3 per cent was dangerously low, the Fannie Mae boss retorted that "our assets are so risk less, we could have a capital ratio of under 2 per cent".

Maxine Walters' complaint about previous attempts to bring the great state-sponsored housing finance bodies under stricter control was partly a reference to Bill Clinton's efforts. Last week the former President acknowledged that "responsibility" for the absence of proper regulation rested "with Democrats who were resisting any efforts of Republicans in Congress, and earlier when I was President and tried to impose tighter standards on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac". Then, as now, members of his own party saw all such initiatives as unwonted attacks on the chances for low-earners, and particularly African-Americans, to own their own homes.

From its inception in 1938 Fannie Mae (and later Freddie Mac) was designed to make housing finance available to "ordinary Americans". This was a noble aim. In the 1970s another Democrat President, Jimmy Carter, introduced legislation which demanded that such bodies enhance their lending to minorities. Again, this was based on a noble idea: to stamp out racism in the mortgage market. Thus by 1998 you had the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston producing a document entitled "Closing the Gap: a Guide to Equal Opportunities Lending", which instructed banks that an applicant's "lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor" in obtaining a mortgage. As Stephen Malanga of the Manhatta *Institute notes: "Of course the new federal standards couldn't just apply to minorities. If they could pay back loans under these terms, then so could the majority of loan applicants. Quickly, these became the new standards in the industry. As the housing market boomed, banks embraced these new standards with a vengeance. Between 2004 and 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became the biggest purchasers of subprime mortgages from all kinds of applicants, white and minority, and most of these loans were based on lending standards promoted by the Government."

One of the few journalists to see where this would lead was Jeff Jacoby, of the Boston Globe. Last week he reminded his readers what he had written in 1995: "Our banks are knowingly approving risky loans to get the feds and the activists off their backs... When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians and regulators plans to take the credit?". Jacoby adds now: "Barney Frank doesn't. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco."

It's true that the improvident lending was not initiated by Fannie and Freddie: their role in this was to buy these loans and sell them on – but then the music stopped. Cynical students of the American political system will note that the biggest recipient of campaign contributions from the munificent duo of Fannie and Freddie over the past 20 years was one Christopher Dodd, Democrat Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee.

Rather surprisingly, given that he has only been in the Senate for four of those years, the second biggest beneficiary was Barack Obama. In August the Washington Post reported that Obama's presidential campaign team had sought the advice of Franklin Raines "on mortgage and housing policy matters". Perhaps Mr Obama's team just wanted to know where all the bodies are buried – there are rather a lot of them.

The saddest outcome of all this within America – apart from the crippling cost to the nation's taxpayers – is that the very people the Democrats had intended to help will be the biggest victims: for many years to come banks will demand the most stringent terms for mortgages to the least well off.

In the meantime, let us praise Congressman Artur Davis of Alabama, who confessed this week: "Like a lot of my Democrat colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised. I wish my Democrat colleagues would admit that we were wrong." I fear Congressman Davis will not go far with this attitude – but at least he will be able to look at himself in the mirror.
Dominic Lawson

What kind of AMERICAN are you?

What Breed of Conservative are you?

Funny thing is I found the link at a Liberal site linked by a Democrat. The same guy has a "fair and balanced" book for the Libs, which you can find on the page. He is smarter than most, covering both sides of the aisle, so he is never wrong...

Here are my results.....
Pretty accurate

Your Conservative Breed: Anti-government Gunslinger
You are a Faith-Based Fighter, also known as a religious conservative. You believe in Judeo-Christian values, and restoring God’s rightful place in the public square.

You are a Flag-Waving Everyman, also known as a patriot. You believe in freedom, apple pie, rooting for America at all times, and that God gave us a two-day weekend so we could enjoy football and NASCAR.

You are a Free Marketeer, also known as a fiscal conservative. You believe in free-market capitalism, tax cuts, and protecting your hard-earned cash from pick-pocketing liberal socialists.

You are a Values Guardian, also known as a social conservative. You believe in serving on the front lines of the culture wars to restore traditional values and protecting America against condom-dispensing, stem cell-sucking sodomites from Hollyweird.

You are an Anti-government Gunslinger, also known as a libertarian conservative. You believe in smaller government, states’ rights, gun rights, and that, as Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

You are a Freedom Crusader. You believe in taking the fight directly to the enemy, whether it’s terrorists abroad or the liberal terrorist appeasers at home who give them aid and comfort.