Newt's A-Twitter About Sotomayor's Racism

Newt Gingrich, who is the top Twitterer at Top Conservatives on Twitter (TCOT), has called for the immediate withdrawal of recent nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, based on his classification of her (rightly) as a racist.

Sotomayor stated in 2001, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

The American Bar Association also lists Sotomayor as a member of the racist group, the National Council of La Raza.

Following the nomination, Gingrich sent the following messages on Twitter:

"Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman.' new racism is no better than old racism."

"White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw."

Thirty-Nine Per Cent of N.C. Realtors Disapprove of Obama

Of course, the primary industry that is hurting, and the industry that started the economic meltdown, has been the banking, mortgage, and real estate industry.

The Obama real estate plan has attempted to subsidize mortgage interest rates so that payments are capped at 31% of household income for troubled borrowers. More than 55,000 homeowners have received modifications, which should have led to significant stabilization of the national real estate market. And after initially pledging $75 billion to this project, the administration has announced that it is expanding the program to include more borrowers.

"These are critical steps in stemming the foreclosure crisis and stabilizing the housing market, both of which are critical to our economic recovery," said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

During the week of May 14, homes in danger of foreclosure jumped 32%, however.

Even the administration offering an $8,000 tax break to new home purchasers, and the consequent monetization of that tax credit, i.e, allowing the tax credit to be used as a portion of a down payment, the stimulus plan has had little effect on the housing market.

HomeGain.com surveys Realtors as to their outlook (both nationally and regionally) on the housing market. The North Carolina market outlooks were recently posted on HomeGain.com's blog.

With all of this stimulus activity, 39% of Realtors disapprove of Obama's job performance.

Now of course, that lack of support could be the result of racism, or it could come from a simple realization that not only is the stimulus not helping either the general economy or the housing market. Obama's supporters will assert the first.

But which is more likely?

Ready to have Uncle Sam as Your Landlord?

Bawney Fwank... uhhhhh, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) recently let the cat out of the bag. It is bad enough that Democrats have (at times it seems intentionally) undermined the housing market, but now they would like to become your (Soviet-style) landlord.

"One of the problems that we got into was we did way too much homeownership and way too little rental housing. And [we need to start] getting the federal government back into the business of rental housing."

Here's your key! Welcome to the Democratic Socialist Ghetto....

CBO On Obama Recession: Years To Recovery

Today, the Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, on the CBO Director's blog, summarized his most recent testimony before Congress.

* While a "recovery" (read: the end of "negative growth") is expected in the second half of this year, unemployment will continue to spike and will stabilize this year in excess of 10%.

* Unemployment's return to pre-Obama levels will likely take "several years" (read: when The Messiah is no longer in office).

* "Even if the economy returns to positive growth this year, the loss in output and income during this downturn will be huge" (note: even if - doesn't sound like we can expect a return to positive growth this year).

* The difference between "actual" and "potential" output of the economy (read: lost production) will exceed $1 trillion both this year and next, and "CBO’s forecast in August is likely to show even larger shortfalls in output over the next few years" (read: the brakes have effectively been put on the economy).

* "The current recession and its aftermath will be the most severe economic downturn of the postwar period."

* "Most experts also believe that persistent large deficits reduce capital accumulation and thereby slow the growth of output and incomes over time. Thus, the large deficits that CBO projects for the years after the economy has returned to full employment are more worrisome" (read: while the CBO is giving a grudging pass to the current $1.7 trillion deficit, it is sounding the alarm that the party can't go on forever, and Obama's spending is going to have to stop).

*"The sharp increase in debt this year and next raises the risk that investors might lose confidence in U.S. government debt as a safe haven" (read: hyperinflation has already started, and we can't trust the collective mainstream media of other countries to keep it a secret like our own home-grown fourth estate is pleased to do).

Odd that the mainstream media hasn't really made any of these points since the Director's testimony was just yesterday. Perhaps CBS and CNN and MSNBC do not know that the CBO director has a blog...?

Liberal Hypocrisy on Card Check

Barack Hussein Muhammad bin Obama promised during his empty-suit campaign for president, "I'll make [card-check] the law of the land" after the election. This was, of course, a promise to one of his largest en banc constituencies - labor unions - whose perceived best interests do not necessarily coincide with the best interests of business, the economy, or the country.

The woefully-named Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA (perhaps the only conceivable analogy would be to name abortion-on-demand legislation "The Rights of the Unborn Act") would necessarily infringe upon the free choice of employees all over the nation by mandating that voting for unionization of companies, and ultimately of entire industries, no longer be done by secret ballot, but rather by a process known as "card check." Card check would make every individual employee's vote on the issue of unionization a public matter and would open employees up to harassment, intimidation, and pressure from labor goons everywhere.

Don't let the irony escape you here: liberal Democrats, who do not even want voters to have to give any objective evidence of their identity (in my home state Democrats have said that asking a voter to present a driver's license, other state ID, or voter registration card on election day is "racism" and "intimidation") in national and state elections, nevertheless want votes for unionization to be matters of public information. As long as "public" is defined as "union."

Liberal Democrat, Obama, and Union, thy very name is liar and hypocrite. Let's take a look at how important secret ballots have been to these bedwetting socialists in the recent past....

Rep. George Miller (D -CA), the sponsor of the EFCA, wrote a letter cosigned by other congressional Democrats to Mexican officials demanding that secret ballots be respected in 2001 Mexican union elections. He wrote

"We understand that the secret ballot is allowed for, but not required, by Mexican labor law. However, we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose."

Get it? Mexican employees need to be protected from "intimidation" in union elections by the secret ballot. Apparently, American workers are not due the same consideration.

Even the egregiously corrupt AFL-CIO has lobbied for the secret ballot - when it served their interests to do so. In a 2001 brief filed by the union with the National Labor Relations Board, the AFL-CIO stated that a secret ballot

"provides the surest means of avoiding decisions which are the result of group pressures and not of individual decisions."

And of course, these bedwetting socialists are more than happy to hide behind the secret ballot when things get sticky for themselves. Asked whom she would support in an interparty vote for the chair of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York said, "It's a secret ballot, thank the Lord."

EFCA has nothing to do with worker rights. It is a final, last-gasp attempt to resuscitate a (thankfully) dying center of corruption in American politics - trade unions. Since workers are no longer fool enough to vote for unionization out of their own free will - only to later watch the unions destroy their jobs, towns, and lives; just ask Detroit - unions are seeking governmental license to engage in intimidation, pressure, and harassment that they would reject for Mexican workers and themselves in one final attempt to preserve this center of Democratic party corruption.

Hypocrisy and lies - now that's change only Democrats can believe in!

Source: "Fairness Demands Secret Votes" by John Boehner in U.S. News & World Report, March 2009.

Obama's Bacchanalia

I want to make sure that I understand what is going on here.

The Heritage Foundation recently posted figures that show that Obama's budget will send the national budget deficit soaring to levels not seen since World War II. As a percentage of GDP, it will increase from 40% during the Bush years to 82% by 2019.

Now, that means that for every dollar produced in the entire economy, the U.S. will accrue 82 cents in debt during that year.

We hear all of these factoids these days:

* Over the next ten years. the U.S. national debt will increase to nearly $20 trillion (and keep in mind that Obama inherited a $6 trillion national debt on his first day in office, accrued over 230 years of U.S. history).

* For every dollar that the U.S. spends today, it is borrowing 50 cents.

* Obama's cap-and-trade scheme will increase the energy bill of the average American family (not corporation - family) by $1,300 per year.

* Obama's CAFE standards will increase the cost of a new car in America by a figure between $1,300 and $7,000 per car.

* Obama's cap-and-trade scheme will cost 3-4 million jobs all by itself - that's not including other causes of unemployment.

* The current unemployment rate nationwide is approaching 9%.

* March housing starts were down 11%.

* Further deflation of the housing market nationwide is expected to be 10%-15% in some areas.

* More bailouts of the banks, the auto companies, and now California.

* Social Security may be insolvent as early as 2010.

And Barack Hussein Muhammad bin Obama has the solution: more deficit spending - and that, as far as the eye can see. Oh, and a government takeover of the health care industry as well; you know, with all that EXTRA money that we have.

This orgy, this bacchanalia of spending can only end one of two ways: either Barack Hussein Muhammad bin Obama is going to spend this nation into utter and complete oblivion, making us a second- or third-world nation, or the people are going to rebel and say "No more!"

Yesterday, the bluest of blue states rose up and said that not one more tax dollar could be granted to its profligate government as California voted down five of six referenda on state spending - approving only a referendum that capped the salaries of state officials.

Rightly or wrongly, voters in the special election refused either to extend new tax hikes or to cap state spending. They also declined to unlock funds that they had voted in better financial times to set aside for special purposes.

Not one county in California passed any of the rejected measures. The state as a whole rejected the emergency spending measures by more than a 60% vote.

Traditional wisdom states that what affects the rest of the country begins in California. Let's hope so. Obama is addicted; he is on a bender. He behaves like a madman on the juice. Only his bacchanalia is an orgy of spending. He is infected with the dread disease of socialism. He needs an intervention.

It is time for the people of the country to take the cue of the people of California and provide it for him.

Honesty, From An Unlikely Source

The February 23 double issue of Time magazine contained an article by Nancy Gibbs titled "25 People to Blame: The good intentions, bad managers and greed behind the meltdown." In it, a "murderer's row" of 25 people (not surprisingly heavy on placing corporate blame, sometimes in the most ludicrous manner; Angelo Mozilo is listed for merely co-founding Countrywide in 1969!) whom the masses may sharpen their pitchforks and skewer in their rage over the recent housing meltdown.

But buried within the usual journalistic [sic] pablum is a heaping big admission - one of the primary souls responsible for the meltdown was Bill Clinton.

"[Bill Clinton] loosened housing rules, putting added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods."

It has been repeatedly alleged on the sanctified pages of Obama Watch that Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus (and their social-engineering fellowtravelers, like Barney Frank) are in fact primarily responsible for the housing meltdown.

Journalists are now officially catching up to the vaunted knowledge available on the blogosphere from conservative bloggers.

Obama Gonna Put a Cap in Your... Wallet

In his crusade to "mobilize the citizenry" to combat the mythical beast of global warming, Barack Hussein Muhammad bin Obama has promised to "cap greenhouse gases" in such a way that "under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

Congressman Steve Scalise recently gave an interview to The Amerian Spectator and talked at length about The One's energy policy. While Obama Budget Director Peter Orszac's estimate that, to obtain a mere 15% decrease in carbon emissions would increase the average family's power bill by $1,300 per year is well known, it is less well known that this simultaneous increase in power costs will also be met with an estimated loss of up to 4 million jobs nationwide, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

I don't know about you, but $1,300 per year is more than my wife and I spend on power bills to begin with. Last year, we spent slightly more than $1,000 on electricity. If we were an "average American family" by Orszac's reckoning, we would have our energy bill increase by well over 100%.

Combined with the rampant overspending of the Obama administration and the impending crisis in Social Security, the United States seemed poised for some much-vaunted Change.

A couple of years from now, if Obama continues to have his way, we will, no doubt, be a second-world nation. I see now that Obama's change is real, but is it what the harebrained masses who voted for him were seeking?