"The American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe"

Praise for the G.I. - from the French, no less! (Who else would call G.I.s "beautiful"?)

A must-read.

From Orion Hood by way of Bill Whittle.

My Lame Attempt at Good Will Wishes for Obama

I wish I could write something for this, but after the thuggish behaviour of Obama and his supporters during the primary caucuses, I cannot.

So I'll link to Bill Whittle doing it instead.
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What is the "Bill" So Far?

In a comment to a previous post, reader obloodyhell made this point (among others):

One thing to realize -- 700 billion sounds like a hell of a lot -- but, at least up until a couple months ago -- it was about 20 days output for the nation.

Not to attack OBH, [ at least not now ;) ], but simply to note: if only it were just $700 Billion.

The $700 Billion is just the Emergency Economic Stability Act - aka "The Swindlers Bailout Act of 2008" - and as I understand it, this amount can rise to $1 Trillion ( and that ignores the $150 Billion of pure pork the Senate added to this obscenity).

There are other huge amounts of "money" which can come to sorrow. How these overlap with bailout funds is unclear, but this still represents the destruction of money, via default of debt, on an enormous scale.

They are:

It is also the $700 Billion or more that the FHLB has "loaned" out using dodgy mortgages or mortgage securities as collateral.

It is also the $1.5 Trillion expansion of the FRB's balance sheet based on unknown collateral, most likely with a smaller "hair-cut" than used by FHLB. The FRB refuses to disclose what this collateral is. This is predicted to reach $3 Trillion by the end of this year.

It is also the $40 Billion per month of toxic sludge that Fannie and Freddie are now committed to buying, going forward. This has some overlap with other categories, but transfers the problem directly to taxpayers, and explicitly targets bad debt.

It is worth noting that the horrible lending practices that were evident in the residential mortgage markets also prevailed in Commercial Real Estate, auto loans and credit card debt. Through various means, including the feedback loops with the real economy, these are already playing a part.

Finally, back to the original black hole for money, see this chart:

(Click image for a larger image in a new window.)

This shows that we have another 2 years of hell at least. All the "Option adjustable rate" loans will probably difault due to the extreme toxicity of these loans (when they "recast", monthly payments can explode by 60%). (The recasts will not happen at the exact time of the resets shown above, but will not be too out of line with them for many of these.) All the other categories will see significant default rates as well, as the represent vintages for which the underwriting standards were truly hideous.

Obama's Massive Caucus Fraud - And the Democrats's Shame

Words fail me. I'm so goddamn disgusted and depressed.

Obama stole all the caucuses he "won" in the primary. These tactics bring to mind nothng so much as the Nazis and the Brown-Shirts in the 1920s and 1930s

And Hillary had to know it was happening as early as the Iowa Caucus in January, and certainly by Super Tuesday, yet failed to make a campaign issue of it. Party unity and winning was more important than the integrity of the electoral process.

Fuck them all.


UPDATE:

HRC knew at least as early as Jan. 23 2008, see here here or here for the letter from HRC Counsel regarding the Nevada Caucus.

See here for the details on the critical, first in the nation, Iowa caucus

Happy Halloween - Just Another 3 Days of Radical-Islamic Murder

Just the last 3 days of infamy from the list at The Religion of Peace.

Date	Country	City	Killed	Injured	Description
10/31/2008	Pakistan	Mardan	8	25	A suicide bomber walks into a home and detonates himself, killing at least eight other people.
10/31/2008	Somalia	Mogadishu	3	3	Islamists successfully kill three civilians in separate grenade attacks on two markets.
10/30/2008	Pakistan	Charbagh	1	0	The Taliban behead an abducted cop after holding him hostage for two days.
10/30/2008	Iraq	Mosul	2	6	A random bombing along a traffic circle leaves two civilians dead.
10/30/2008	India	Assam	77	300	Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami terrorists massacre over seventy people in six deadly blasts across several towns.
10/30/2008	Afghanistan	Kabul	5	23	A woman is among five people killed when a Muslim terrorist throws a bomb into an office building.
10/29/2008	Pakistan	Dera Ismail Khan	3	0	Three Shiite civilians standing at a bus stop are gunned down in cold blood by Sunni militants.
10/29/2008	Pakistan	Bannu	2	11	Two local soldiers are blown to bits by a Fedayeen suicide bomber.
10/29/2008	Somalia	Hargeisa	28	26	Five separate suicide bombings leave over two dozen innocent people dead in commercial areas across the city.
10/29/2008	Iraq	Baghdad	5	17	Mujahideen bomb a soda fountain, killing at least five patrons.
10/29/2008	Iraq	Balad Ruz	3	14	al-Qaeda gunmen muder three children in their home.
10/29/2008	Thailand	Pattani	1	0	Islamists shoot a 52-year-old man to death.
10/29/2008	Iraq	Baqubah	1	16	A 4-year-old child is murdered by Islamic bombers.