Updated: Bachmann: Banks Gave Money To ACORN For Government Rating

Affirmative Action, Ann Coulter, Bush, Conservatism, Debt, Ethics, Private Property, Regulation, Republicans, Socialism, Welfare

Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota, inadvertently traces the “Minority Housing Meltdown”: The community reinvestment Act” (CRA), a creation of the federal Frankenstein, compelled private banks to make home loans to individuals with poor credit. Since no bank wants to make bad loans, this legislation in effect threatens banks to so do. Unless the bank lends to those unworthy of credit, it will not be allowed to do interstate business or expand its operations.

But, the benevolent government also offers the errant banks redemption. In order to get a positive Community Reinvestment Act rating, a bank may give over cash or in-kind donations to ACORN. A bank can also partner with ACORN to make loans to the pool of poor they represent.

By the way, where are the media stories about Super Mom Bachman who has raised five kids and 23 foster children? Maybe when the morons are through belaboring Michele Obama’s biceps, they can tell us more about Bachmann. (Here you are welcome to improvise with your own clichés of improbability.)

Fast forward toward the end of the YouTube clip for the Bachmann interview.

Update (Oct. 16): No ACORN essay is complete without mention of Bush’s crucial role in the mortgage meltdown. I have not studied the NRO Kurtz piece, but somehow I doubt it gives Bush the “credit” he is due in the diversity depression.

In 2003, Norman Singleton wrote this:

“Today the House passed, by voice vote, the American Dream Downpayment Act (HR 1276). This new welfare program forces taxpayers to subsidize the downpayments of ‘low income’ Americans. This new welfare program is a Bush Administration priority and was sponsored by Katherine Harris. The GOP is already touting how this will help with their outreach to minorities.”

Read Ron Paul’s rapid-fire response to the Bush affirmative action mortgage program.

Unless our token conservatives pay their “respects” to Bush, author of the “ownership society,” reborn conservatives—NRO, Weekly Standard—should not be lauded.

And by the by, the many poisonous pundits should atone again and again for being wrong at the time, and misleading the masses for Benito Bush. On second thought, why don’t they just go away?!

Take “snake-oil merchants like Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal,” who is Fox’s new Philosopher King. Moore obfuscated about the bailout (while making the obligatory noises about the merits of the free market he flouts). And Moore’s previous book was entitled Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer. If that’s not an indictment, nothing is. ‘Bush’s bailout society’ is an instantiation of the principles upon which ‘Bush’s ownership society’ was founded: credit for those who are not creditworthy.”

The only pundit who was vocal about the Bush economics was Michele Malkin. Not party hack Ann Coulter.

[Thanks, Stephen; I have been rather ill, but I hope to be back at my WND perch next week with renewed verve.]

Updated: Loser Lindsey G. Pummeled By Paul

Constitution, Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Race, Republicans, Ron Paul

I’ve said it before, the stupid party needs not a bigger tent, but a giant tin-foil hat. Duly, Lindsey Graham attacks Mr. Constitution, Rep. Ron Paul, by vowing to a booing town-hall gathering to rescue the GOP from white gentlemen like Paul (words you’d expect from the Party of Lincoln), and to continue shedding blood in futile, unconstitutional wars.

To which Ron Paul replied: “What does Graham have against the Constitutions?” Of course, Graham embodies everything that is wicked about the Republican Party.

Update: Glenn Beck gives it to Graham too: pro amnesty, for Sotomayor, for stimulus package; signed climate-change bill…

Update IV: Falcon's Flight Of Fancy (Farce Continued)

Family, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, The Zeitgeist

Is the following item a metaphor for the American state of mind or what?

Grown-ups, who happen to be parents too, had been building a balloon-like experimental aircraft at their home on Fossil Ridge Road in Fort Collins. “The family has described the structure as a dome-shaped ‘homemade flying saucer.’ These kooks kinda believed they had secured the helium-filled contraption to the ground. Kinda, because their 6-year-old boy proved them wrong, when he climbed into the loosely tethered thing and is now afloat in the sky over eastern Colorado.

“We’re trying to determine the best course of action,” said Larimer County Sheriff’s Office Spokeswoman Kathy Davis. “This is a first and we’ll do what we need to do.”

I’d say!

A “silly people in serious times” is how Pat Buchanan characterized the contemporary America’s mindset.

Update I: The balloon has deflated and landed. No child was found therein. That’s not exactly surprising given the heights the thing scaled. The nation is searching, chicken-little style, for the poor boy, son to Richard Henne … a known storm chaser, who might have done some extracurricular chasing too: Henne made an appearance on the television program WifeSwap.

Mom’s name is “Mayumi.” It is not clear if Henne was on the tawdry reality show to “trade.” The media is characterizing the family’s “belief system” as a love of science. The Age of the Idiot…

Poor little “Falcon” (boy’s name).

Update II: On listening to the adjectival approval heaped on this family and its lifestyle—quirky, interesting, spontaneous, adventurous, science and mysticism lovers—it occurred to me that the parents of a Christian home schooler gone amiss in an air borne contraption would be met with an entirely different reaction. To wit: What were these atavistic homeschoolers doing to their child? Deluding him about the presence of G-d and the ability to reach Him with a man-made device? Why was he off school? Should social services be called? Improvise…

Update III: An entire news cycle was devoted to following the imaginary “Falcon,” as he flew through the air. Falcon was eventually located at home hiding in the extra-terrestrial transportation box engineered by his brilliant father, who was described by some members of the media as a mad genius. Publicity stunt? Journalistic ineptness? A pulse of the people’s tastes and proclivities?

Update IV: If you read the storyline, as I tracked it above, you’ll glean that from the get-go, the news media hawked the Falcon-In-The-Sky story as though it were fact. All failed the most basic journalistic test. A lede written by an old-school journalist would have specified the What, Where, Who, Why and How of the story, and then left it.

It is, moreover, amazing that the authorities and the media began from the premise that Falcon was levitating 10,000 feet above them, rather than hiding somewhere on terra firma. This is an example of the contagion that is mass stupidity.

Update IV (Oct. 16): FARCE CONTINUED. It transpires that the “Silly Sex” had a lot to do with how this story was accepted on the face of it. With the same confidence with which allegations of date rape are accepted from women, the police Spokes Skirt had reported that there was no doubt that “Falcon” was flying high. News media then ran with this factoid without checking it. Apparently, said a male police spokesman, the family (amateur actors and all-round grafters) behaved in a believable manner.

This hearkens back to that famous American naiveté—a chronic incuriosity and lack of inquisitiveness. The absence of a learning curve probably comports with this eternal wide-eyed wonderment.

Falcon, the child, is exhibiting what, I would wager, are the symptoms of severe stress: vomiting during the press and TV performances his grease ball of a father has put him through.

Update IV: Falcon’s Flight Of Fancy (Farce Continued)

Family, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, The Zeitgeist

Is the following item a metaphor for the American state of mind or what?

Grown-ups, who happen to be parents too, had been building a balloon-like experimental aircraft at their home on Fossil Ridge Road in Fort Collins. “The family has described the structure as a dome-shaped ‘homemade flying saucer.’ These kooks kinda believed they had secured the helium-filled contraption to the ground. Kinda, because their 6-year-old boy proved them wrong, when he climbed into the loosely tethered thing and is now afloat in the sky over eastern Colorado.

“We’re trying to determine the best course of action,” said Larimer County Sheriff’s Office Spokeswoman Kathy Davis. “This is a first and we’ll do what we need to do.”

I’d say!

A “silly people in serious times” is how Pat Buchanan characterized the contemporary America’s mindset.

Update I: The balloon has deflated and landed. No child was found therein. That’s not exactly surprising given the heights the thing scaled. The nation is searching, chicken-little style, for the poor boy, son to Richard Henne … a known storm chaser, who might have done some extracurricular chasing too: Henne made an appearance on the television program WifeSwap.

Mom’s name is “Mayumi.” It is not clear if Henne was on the tawdry reality show to “trade.” The media is characterizing the family’s “belief system” as a love of science. The Age of the Idiot…

Poor little “Falcon” (boy’s name).

Update II: On listening to the adjectival approval heaped on this family and its lifestyle—quirky, interesting, spontaneous, adventurous, science and mysticism lovers—it occurred to me that the parents of a Christian home schooler gone amiss in an air borne contraption would be met with an entirely different reaction. To wit: What were these atavistic homeschoolers doing to their child? Deluding him about the presence of G-d and the ability to reach Him with a man-made device? Why was he off school? Should social services be called? Improvise…

Update III: An entire news cycle was devoted to following the imaginary “Falcon,” as he flew through the air. Falcon was eventually located at home hiding in the extra-terrestrial transportation box engineered by his brilliant father, who was described by some members of the media as a mad genius. Publicity stunt? Journalistic ineptness? A pulse of the people’s tastes and proclivities?

Update IV: If you read the storyline, as I tracked it above, you’ll glean that from the get-go, the news media hawked the Falcon-In-The-Sky story as though it were fact. All failed the most basic journalistic test. A lede written by an old-school journalist would have specified the What, Where, Who, Why and How of the story, and then left it.

It is, moreover, amazing that the authorities and the media began from the premise that Falcon was levitating 10,000 feet above them, rather than hiding somewhere on terra firma. This is an example of the contagion that is mass stupidity.

Update IV (Oct. 16): FARCE CONTINUED. It transpires that the “Silly Sex” had a lot to do with how this story was accepted on the face of it. With the same confidence with which allegations of date rape are accepted from women, the police Spokes Skirt had reported that there was no doubt that “Falcon” was flying high. News media then ran with this factoid without checking it. Apparently, said a male police spokesman, the family (amateur actors and all-round grafters) behaved in a believable manner.

This hearkens back to that famous American naiveté—a chronic incuriosity and lack of inquisitiveness. The absence of a learning curve probably comports with this eternal wide-eyed wonderment.

Falcon, the child, is exhibiting what, I would wager, are the symptoms of severe stress: vomiting during the press and TV performances his grease ball of a father has put him through.