L

et’s take a break from all the newsy frivolity – the economic recovery plan, the market mayhem, Ahmadinejad’s latest threats against Israel, oh, I don’t know … the election – and deal with something really, really serious. Sarah Palin’s lip liner. We join the world’s largest leftyblog:

On September 10th, Wonkette received a tip that Sarah Palin’s lipliner is a tattoo.

From: C______@gmail.com>
To: tips@wonkette.com
Date: Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 2:59 PM
Subject: tip on Sarah Pallin Notes: Sarah’s sister in-law owns a beauty parlor in Wasilla…apparently Sarah’s lip liner is tattooed on…not sure what to do with that one.
leak to wonkette

So although the allegation comes in a strangely cryptic email and there is no actual proof that this procedure was performed, we’ve been studying Sarah Palin’s mouth very closely …

Are they obsessed? Yes, I’d say they’re obsessed. The 43.49% that say it is a lip tattoo are obsessed, the 23.24% that say it’s not are obsessed, and even the 28.68% who have studied and pondered and pondered and studied and just couldn’t make up their minds are terribly, terribly obsessed.

By the way, Incredible Daughter #2, who is trained in this sort of stuff (she’s not just a beauty, she’s a beauty professional) took one look at the picture above and said:

No way. It’s uneven … but WHO CARES?

Smart girl. Do you think we’ll see a poll next on whether Joe Biden’s got hair plugs? No, of course not. It doesn’t matter because he’s a man so let’s not get catty, and more to the point, he’s not a woman who has done the unspeakable sin of not goose-stepping with the bra-burners. Conservative women, we are led to believe by this obscene obsession withe Palin, aren’t allowed to think, work, run for vice president, and they certainly aren’t allowed to get lip liner tattoos.

Here’s a question that we conservatives might want to spend the next day or two on: Do you think Nancy Pelosi has a new face tattooed over her old one?

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B

arney Frank may be feeling a bit blue because he knows people in his district seat, Newton MA, found this in the Boston Globe a couple days back:

Now that the bubble has burst and the “systemic risk” is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: “The private sector got us into this mess.” Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.

Jeff Jacoby’s Globe column lays out to Boston readers what we in the blogosphere already know: It was Dems and radical housing activists that got us into this mess with the Community Reinvestment Act on 1977, and it was Dems (most noisily Barney Frank) who kept insisting that Freddie and Fannie were just fine, thank you, keep that money rolling in. If it’s retribution we’re looking for, push Frank to the head of the line, Newtonians, and vote him out.

Of course, the lib Massachusetts voters are none too keen on messengers who ruffle their deeply Dem feathers, and the comments to Jacoby’s piece are largely negative and, typically, personal instead of intellectual:

jeff Joke-oby, you are a racist buffoon. You and your sick rich cohorts run our economy into the ground and make an absolute mega fortune, it all goes bust (as it had to) and then you turn around and blame….Minorities????!!!?? You must be kidding me! The depths of your unreason know no bounds. You should be ashamed of yourself, You Rush Limbaugh clone…perhaps the Mexican laborers who built your McMansion brought a mutated strain of bubonic plague over the border and infected the entire financial system with evil immigrant nefarious virus stuff. Whatever Jeff, face it. YOU LOST. REAGAN LOST. THE FREE MARKET LOST. Your days of sucking the peoples blood to make your points and those of your corporate masters are OVER. Now go get a real job. (IF you can find one).

The free market lost? Well, we all know what the only alternative is to a free market: the socialist state. Which makes this comment particularly apropos:

Good work, Mr. Jacoby, but don’t stop with Frank. Barack Obama sued lenders, to get them to issue more bad loans.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

The link is to James Simpson’s article, “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis,” which I summarized this week in Sunday Scan – and is the one article of all I’ve read thus far that illuminates the magnitude of the evil strategy behind what’s going on now in the financial markets – nothing less than a socialist coup.

If you’ve got 11 minutes, check out this video, linked by the same commenter:

hat-tip: Jim

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I

n the rush of everything that’s been going on since McCain suspended his campaign and Obama kept talking and talking and talking and talking, I managed to miss this, but Brian Goetti at The Conservative Edge didn’t:

Two weeks ago, when the financial crisis hit home, the Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid said that “no one knew what to do”. Since that time, proposals have been made to solve the problem.

None of the proposals have come from Democrats. The Bush Administration proposed a bailout that Harry Reid, Nanci Pelosi and Barak Obama signed onto.

House Republicans put forth their own plan as well. So where is the Democratic leadership on this crisis? No where to be found as far as I can tell.

With the Dems now convinced they’ve got their election-winner, they won’t lift a finger to help. They might want to adapt McCain’s slogan and make it their own: Self-Interest First.

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B

eing from Orange County – beautiful and pleasant place that it is – I unfortunately have to live with crooks since we long have been the white collar crime capital of the country.  Hey, if you were a criminal who had tons of stolen money and could live anywhere, wouldn’t this be your kind of place?

So for the last several years, up until a few months ago, this meant sharing the county with a lot of  young “Mortgage Millionaires.” It got positively bland seeing guys in their 30s driving by in Ferraris and Lambos.

My friend Neil, who has a knack for keeping just about every document known to man handily filed so he can pull it up in the blink of an eye sent me this observation made in 2003 from a long-defunct blog, “Content Goes Here.”  Cute name.

I was at my local coffeehouse today and a woman came who turned a lot of heads. She was young, very tan, with one of those spectacularly unrealistic Barbie bodies. Her face was a bit worn from sun and partying. She was on the arm of a spiky-haired and also very tan guy in his 30s who exuded money and oily charm….

There are a lot of these people in my part of Orange County, California. The subprime mortgage industry, as it feeds off the desperation of strapped hicks all over the country, has created a lot of high-wage jobs for business school graduates with connections. For some reason a particular kind of person flourishes in this environment. The men are simultaneously degenerate and athletic, and spend money with abandon. The women are simultaneously degenerate and athletic, and are sexually available without much trouble…

As long as interest rates are low and the nation’s struggling classes are refinancing their mortgages for extra cash, this predatory class of surfer bankers can pull in very good money, as much as $30,000 to $60,000 a month in some cases…

And inevitably, interest rates will rise again, the money will move, and the easy money will leave the subprime mortgage business. A lot of those $30,000 a month jobs for well-connected partiers will vanish, as will the leased supercars and the beach houses….

A quote attached to the blog notes:

This posting is dated July 24, 2003, which means it may well qualify as one of the very first warnings of a subprime lending industry collapse.

Collapse it did, and the thought of bailing out this guy and his girlfriend is what was driving the votes of many in Congress, when they refused to vote for the recovery package.

Neil adds a thought on what just might make this economic recovery package fly:

So, to the barricades!  I mentioned to our human factors guru on Friday that what the bailout plan missed was retribution.  I suggested that what we needed was heads on pikes.

This morning I mentioned to him that we are going to run out of pikes before we run out of heads.

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H

eaven forbid that schools should have a caring environment.

No, scratch that.  Whatever forbid that schools should have a caring environment.  There, that’s suitably secular for this story from the crumbling edges of our civilization.  And the story is just the start of the story; bear with me.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is bringing a lawsuit against the Cherry Creek schools in Denver because some of the principles taught in the district’s “40 Developmental Assets” program allegedly are drawn from biblical teachings.

For example, Asset 5 in the program, a “caring school climate,” allegedly is related by the institute to the teaching in the New Testament book of Mark, which says, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name, welcomes me,” according to a report in the Denver Post.

The program also recommends students spend an hour or more a week in a religious community, and the complaint alleges that is using tax money to promote religion, the report said.

The foundation, based in Madison, Wis., said in an amended complaint in federal court in Denver it has evidence the Cherry Creek program, developed by the Search Institute, is linked to the Bible. (WND)

The Cherry Creek program has been using Search Institute materials for 15 years, not as curricula but “a behavioral framework” promoted by the schools.  Search the Search Institute’s mission page and you have to look very hard to find a reference to religion on it (the word “congregation” appears once), although its history page reveals it started over 50 years ago as a Luthern program.  This is a program that’s sufficiently un-overt to fit in America’s secular classrooms.

Have we come to the point where merely being “linked to the Bible” is enough to trash something?  Are we now at the place where the suspicion that Search Institute’s core beliefs are Judeo-Christian, even if there aren’t Bible verses all over their stuff,  alone is sufficient to fire up the book-burning machine?

America just happens to be “linked to the Bible” (here, for example), so what are we supposed to do to please/appease the tiny number of crackpots at the Freedom from Religion Foundation, aka the Whining Shrilly That Most People Don’t Believe What I Believe Foundation?  Toss in the towel and become secular fodder for Islamists, like Europe?

Well, before we accept that end, perhaps it’s worthwhile to scan down to the bottom of this article and see what’s going on in schools in the vicinity, since WND’s Web site happily puts together links to related stories; in this case, stories on education:

Teacher falsely tells kids they have fatal disease

Campaign launched to liberate ‘speling’

Student says ‘F— off!’ on test, gets better grade

Today’s class: Hating Jews 101

Bilingual, pro-American book ‘unfit’ for L.A. schools

Female teacher arrest for 9 flings with student

6th-grade survey: Classmate most likely to get pregnant

3rd-graders asked to help classmate in gender change

Children’s hospital launches sex change for kids program

Voting rights challenged in ‘coed showers’ lawsuit

Lord help us!  If we want more of these kinds of terrible goings-on where we educate our precious children, then yes, let’s continue un-linking America from the Bible!

hat-tip: Jim

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Y

es, the whole story of the Faina, its hull full of Russian weapons for American allies in Africa, hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast is major good stuff, matey.  Rrrrr.  But there’s a better one, this time with the Iranians. And chemical weapons.

This from The Times (of South Africa this time):

A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates.

Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”

The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.

Chemical weapons?  Is anyone really surprised that the Tehraniacs would provide chemical weapons to an Islamist insurgency in Somalia?  Will anyone really be surprised if/when the same Tehraniacs provide a nuclear device to Islamist insurgents to set of in Israel, Europe or America?

More on the story:

The ship is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military.

According to the US Treasury Department, the IRISL regularly falsifies shipping documents to hide the identity of end users, uses generic terms to describe shipments and operates under various covers to circumvent United Nations sanctions.

The ship set sail from Nanjing, China, at the end of July. According to its manifest, it was heading for Rotterdam where it would unload 42500 tons of iron ore and “industrial products” purchased by a German client.

The ship set sail from China?  Now if I was a crazed Mullah and I wanted to deliver some chemical weapons I happened to have on hand just down the pike to Somalia, I don’t think I’d do it by way of China.  It’s much more likely that the Tehraniacs contracted with China to purchase the chemical weapons.

Is anyone surprised that China would sell chemical weapons to anyone with the cash to buy them?  After all, they put melamine in their own babies’ milk just to make an extra buck.

There’s good guys and bad guys in the world, and thanks to some sick and dying bad guys in Somalia, we’ve been given a window into where the real evil resides.

Hat-tip: Jim

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“O

ur time has run out.  We’re going make a decision. There are no other choices, no other alternatives,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus, ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee.

Then the vote came, and the House of Representatives voted down the rescue plan by a vote of 228-205 … whereupon the Dow recovered 100 points before trailing off again to a daily loss of just below 600 points.

Our time has run out?  What does that mean?  Certainly the economy’s time has not run out; there is a vested interest on the part of the millions who make up and move the economy to keep it running; they’re not going to quit this afternoon because Congress fell 14 votes short.  It’s politicians’ time that may be running out, especially if they want to put this as far behind them as they can before Nov. 3.  (It was, after all, the House that voted it down – the House, where Representatives answer to the public every two years.)

Irwin Kellner at MarketWatch wrote this morning of the lack of correlation between what’s going on now and what happened in 1929, throwing a lot of calm reality in the face of the hysterics who fear imminent and total collapse of the economy.

Here are just a few of his examples:

• In the crash of 1929 the Dow Jones industrials plunged 40% in two months; this time around it has taken a year to fall 22%.
• The jobless rate jumped to 25% by 1933; it is little more than 6% today.
• Some 40% of all mortgages were delinquent by 1934 compared with 4% today.
• In the 1930s, more than 9,000 banks failed compared with fewer than 20 over the past couple of years.

On top of that, the policies imposed in 1929 were disastrous, and are not being replicated now.  Of course things could get worse, but we’re not going to go from a thick steak at Morton’s to the soup kitchen over night if Congress spends another day or two to improve the legislation a tad more.  A month or two could be a problem, but a day or two … c’mon.

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CBS Edited Palin To Increase ‘Hawkishness’

We have already reported how ABC edited Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin to make her look less informed, and that they presented some of her answers out of context.  It is with a complete lack of surprise that we now report that CBS did the same thing with the Couric/Palin interviews.

The blog The Iris has the details with extensive sections of deleted transcript.  In quick summary, editors at CBS cut:

4 instances when Palin used the word “allies”
3 instances when Palin used the word “democracies”
3 instances when Palin used the word “friends”
3 instances when Palin used the word “nations”

They had committed to make her look hawkish, so they cut out references to diplomacy, caution and discussions – and yet they call themselves objective reporters.  Oh, yeah?  Here’s one cut passage:

(2:58) Couric: What, specifically, in your view, could be done to convince the new government in Pakistan to take a harder, tougher line against terrorists in that country?

Palin: At a time when new leadership comes in, that is the opportunity to forge better, tighter, more productive relationships and that’s what we’ll take advantage of with new leadership in the US and in Pakistan. And I’m sure that President Zardari, too, will agree with us as we commit to the support that Pakistan needs, that other nations in the region need, in order to win this war on terrorism. (3:32)

I understand editing for length; segment lengths are pretty inflexible in the ancient land of the MSM.  That is what CBS will plea if and when this complaint ever gets the media’s attention (big if).  But they’ll just be painting a false, pretty face on their dispicableness, just as they painted an false, ugly face on Palin’s moderateness.

Hat-tip Urgent Agenda via Jim

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias in the presidential campaign. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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M

any of us have come to believe that the current financial mess can, in large part, be traced back to 1977, when Jimmy Carter’s pen signed the Community Reinvestment Act into law, giving the proud profession of community organizer a new reason for being. (Of course, Wall Street is much at fault to, because of how it handled the highly speculative toxic mortgages that grew out of CRA.)

Following passage of CRA, people like Madeline Talbott – described today by Stanley Kurtz in the NY Post as “a key pioneer in ACORN’s subprime shake-down racket” – began organizing the community to act. As head of ACORN Chicago, she began sit-ins (scream-ins, really) in bank lobbies, demanding home loans for people whose finances were so awful no sane person would consider them. She kept up the pressure using a team of organizers who were trained by … Barack Obama. Writes Kurtz:

IT would be tough to find an “on the ground” community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early ’90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama’s legal services for a “motor voter” case and partnered with him on his 1992 “Project VOTE” registration drive.

In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks.

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago’s Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation’s board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers – and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee’s report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama’s organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott’s ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.

MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report ac knowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN – whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public’s eye. The Woods Fund’s claim to be “nonideological,” it says, has “enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government ‘establishments’ without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship.”

Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?

Troublingly familiar.

There is a great danger to the nation that this deep and insidious scandal will never come to light because the media and Congressional Democrats will conspire to cover it up. The support (including financial) groups like ACORN received from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not be addressed, nor would links between those pushing this scheme and proponents of the Cloward-Priven strategy of chaos manufactured to bring down the Country, nor would we see Obama’s radical background exposed … at least prior to Nov. 3.

There is so much low-hanging fruit for the McCain campaign to pick in this scandal, it’s a wonder that the GOP continues to be on the losing end of the financial crisis.  When will they get it and begin using the roots of this crisis to win the election?

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