That bastion of accuracy, the S&P downgraded the USA on Friday, August 5th after the markets were closed. But anybody with Google finance can easily see that the sell off began on August 3rd when the June 15th lows were taken out. Do you really think that the guys with the money were surprised by the S&P downgrade? The charts show what is really happening. Those guys sold weeks ahead of the news (could they have already known it was coming? Nah..), now they are going to take your money (again) as you sell into the bad news.

It’s not that bad. Don’t miss this opportunity to buy American.

The latest on the shooter in Norway…

“What we know is that he is right wing and a Christian fundamentalist.”

Where did they come up with that? Everything that I understand about the “fundamental” elements of Christianity point to a different interpretation of this perpetrators actions. I’ve always put forth my Christianity an indicator of my willingness and my desire to see the best in everyone, as an example of Charity and Love. After all the recent acceptance of pornography and homosexuality, is this what we are left with? Christians are the murderers?

God really HAS given us over hasn’t He?

Ok, I’m not a birther nor given easily to conspiratorial ideas, nor am I an Adobe Illustrator expert (I am with Adobe Photoshop). However I duplicated the issues outlined by several people regarding President Obama’s recent release of his purported Birth Certificate by opening it in Adobe Illustrator (I used CS3) and examining the results.

After moving the layered text to a new location, it’s evident that some of the letters of the text are not on the same layer. Note the ‘S’ in Stanley or the ‘K’ in Kenya for instance along with several other characters. There may be a perfectly good explanation for this, but the PDF document appears to have been manipulated digitally. Why does the PDF file appear to have been manipulated?

Birth Certificate Layers

Birth Certificate Manipulated?

Update: It is being reported that this digital PDF was created by an OCR scanner that automatically created the layers in the process of printing the document. I think this is a plausible explanation and it is probably the correct one. It is unfortunate though because it adds additional fuel to an issue that could have been easily put to rest.

Sometimes I just can’t stand it, this text was actually published in the New York Times today…

“The Arizona law — which Ms. Brewer signed in April and which, barring an injunction, takes effect July 29 — makes it a crime to be an illegal immigrant there”

Abby, being an illegal immigrant is well, illegal. Being here illegally is a crime, the new law doesn’t make it a crime. You’re getting paid to write this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/us/politics/12governors.html

The “Top Kill” maneuver appears to be a mess and the oil continues to spew into the gulf. President Obama is still hoping someone figures out how to stop it. Why isn’t he being held responsible for the inaction? He _is_ the president after all…

Click here to view the latest from the BP live camera
BP Camera Live feed

Napolitano said she is “fully committed to making whatever changes are necessary to protect the safety of the traveling public.”

Janet was responsible for making ‘whatever’ changes were necessary to protect the traveling public BEFORE the the bomb was onboard. Now she just needs to go and the quicker the better.

A government-sponsored “public option” for health care lives, though it may be more attractive to skeptics if it goes by a different moniker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday.

If competition is lacking, the government has means to break a monopoly. The did it with the telephone company and they could do it with the insurance companies if that were really the issue. It’s not, half of the country has figured out that they can vote themselves the other half of the country’s money. This whole ‘healthcare’ debate stinks.

“For me, his dance moves and his music — all his songs were about a better world. He’ll live on for generations,”

No, he won’t. It is a twisted culture that we live in, evidenced by Jackson’s attention. But the simple truth is that he will be replaced by the next big thing… sooner than you think.

“You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out” – Of course Warren Buffet is correct. Concerning the financial crisis, why didn’t we see it coming?

I did. Did you?

On a world wide scale, some politicians and some bankers have been rejecting time-honored principals of sound financial judgement. Here in America, the very same politicians charged with protecting the public interest are now ‘bailing out’ some of the very same bankers that caused the problem in the first place! They say that they are preventing further hardship for all of us but I suspect that they are also frantically trying to cover themselves and their poor judgement.

We’ve put the fox in charge of the chicken coop who after finding the chicken coop empty yet again, tells us that the problem can be solved if we only put some more chickens in the coop! Are we really that stupid?

Only vote for politicians that fear the judgement of God. If they don’t fear God, do you think that they will fear the people?

“These measures are not intended to take over the free market but to preserve it” – G. Bush

When the talk is apocalyptic, be very concerned. The free market doesn’t exist at the pleasure of the government. The government is usually a burden to the free market.

We are in the midst of monumental change, and I pray that our leaders have more wisdom. I fear that they don’t.

WASHINGTON (AP) – With the economy on the brink and elections looming, Congress approved an unprecedented $700 billion government bailout of the battered financial industry on Friday and sent it to President Bush for his certain signature.

Oh good, now we can stop worrying. (It’s actually $800 billion but who’s counting, at least not the Associated Press.) I commend the brave 171 congresspersons for voting no. I believe that this will simply delay the inevitable, unless we take strong measures to change our borrowing and lending habits.

AEIR – Bailout plan doesn’t stand up

The federal government should defend the country and deliver the mail. We the people are the captain of this ship and we will bail it out without your help, thank you very much.

Go deliver the mail and defend our borders, and save us a little money while your at it.

“They have to recognize that we are facing a very serious economic slowdown, a recession that could be of long-lasting and deep impact,” – Hillary Clinton

Then let’s get started with the slowdown. We have lived far too long beyond our means and it’s time to break the poisonous habit of easy money that has imprisoned our people. We are a proud and free people and I for one do not want to give my children a socialist country.

I believe that we should not pass this bill in any form. We will suffer in the short term but be better off in the long term.

Why propping up banks will not rescue a debauched financial system

Good. And now we may suffer a somewhat deeper, yet likely shorter recession that we would have otherwise. I believe that we will rise a stronger nation because of it and our children will learn to not be so foolish with their money in the future.

Do you think money grows on trees? “Just tell me your income, no need to verify it. I’ll get you the loan….” The fault lies with the dishonest mortgage brokers, urging others to lie about their income. And also those who willingly lied to borrow more money than they could pay back.

One of the promises of God to Israel:

For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee. Deu 15:6

H R 3997 – Roll Call Vote

Ayes
Representative Diana DeGette (D – 01)
Representative Tom Tancredo (R – 06) (What were you thinking Tom?)
Representative Ed Perlmutter (D – 07)

Noes
Representative Mark Udall (D – 02)
Representative John Salazar (D – 03)
Representative Marilyn Musgrave (R – 04) (Thank you Marilyn)
Representative Doug Lamborn (R – 05)

NYT Revealed True Cause of Fannie Mae Crisis — In 1999!

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

“Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,” said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.”

- New York Times, September 30, 1999

Here is the original article

“The stock market soared as much as 300 points on news that the federal money spigot was going to be turned on to bolster teetering banks.”

Where do people get these ideas? If we are all out of work, where do you think the Federal Government is going to get money to pour out its money ’spigot’? They will print the money of course and this devalues what little we have left by sparking runaway inflation. Hold on to your hats, this is going to be a rough ride…

What happened to the good ‘ole days when bankers just jumped out of windows?

It is a fact of nature that if you let an illness run it’s course, if the patient lives, they’ll be stronger for it and often gain immunity from having the same illness again for life. Seems like the last generation that learned their lesson have died and their children didn’t learn from them.

It may be better for our nation to suffer the pains of a severe financial hardship now and grow stronger because of it, than to let a bunch of self-serving politicians and financiers tax us into a lifetime of financial servitude. We will have learned a lesson and become wiser for it.

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” – Jefferson’s sentiments in a letter to James Madison on January 30, 1787, expressing justification for the series of protests led by Daniel Shay and a group of 1,200 farmers.

According to an article on Wikipedia on the Great Depression, in the Austrian view it was the inflation of the money supply that led to an unsustainable boom in both asset prices (stocks and bonds) and capital goods. By the time the Fed belatedly tightened in 1928, it was far too late and, in the Austrian view, a depression was inevitable.

The artificial interference in the economy was a disaster prior to the Depression, and government efforts to prop up the economy after the crash of 1929 only made things worse! According to Rothbard, government intervention delayed the market’s adjustment and made the road to complete recovery more difficult.

Two years ago I had a lender tell me it didn’t matter how much money I made, just ‘tell’ them that I made enough money to get the loan and they would get it done for me. That should have been criminal at the time and it should be prosecuted now. Greed and imprudence, as old as the world.

“Where once more-marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit, lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately. These improvements have led to rapid growth in subprime mortgage lending.” – April 2005: Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve

Mr. Greenspan concluded that it was a good thing to make money available to those that couldn’t afford it, and incorrectly judged the risk of doing it. Sounds like Long Term Capital Management all over again. Someone will finally need to pay the bill for this, any guess who it’s going to be?

According to Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and American economist Murray Rothbard, who wrote America’s Great Depression (1963). In their view, the key cause of the Depression was the expansion of the money supply in the 1920s that led to an unsustainable credit-driven boom. In their view, the Federal Reserve, which was created in 1913, shoulders much of the blame.

An “unsustainable credit-driven boom”, sound familar?.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression#Austrian_School_explanations

“You’ll be encouraged by the power of God’s love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality,” according to the insert in the bulletin of the Wasilla Bible Church.

Not withstanding that this quote is pulled from a flyer published by another Christian group that is not directly affiliated with the Wasilla Church and has probably been included in thousands of other church bulletins as well. (Focus on the Family is a large organization.)

As usual, the real issue is left unchallenged. Is homosexuality wrong? Why is not a second thought given when people use a pseudo-science (Psychology) to encourage people to practice homosexual behavior? There are numerous organizations that relentlessly drum the idea that people should ‘come out’ and not resist the flightiest of homosexual thoughts. Hundreds of homosexual ‘dating’ websites encouraging and facilitating it.

Why should it be surprising to find a Christian group working to share Biblical teachings about homosexuality? Have we come so far that even a gentle reminder of what the Bible reveals about homosexuality will not be tolerated any longer? (Romans, Chapter 1, etc.)

You should have seen it by now, the ABC reporter getting arrested on the sidewalk outside the Brown Palace in Denver. As a conservative Christian who generally votes Republican, I’m appalled at the lack of professionalism demonstrated by the Police (Boulder and Denver offices.)

If these officers of the court are not reprimanded and compelled to receive additional training, then their supervisors should be fired right along with them. These guys work for us, and we shouldn’t tolerate being roughed up by the very police whose job it is to ‘protect and to serve’ us.

Finally,

A blow to the relentless march towards socialism in the United States.

When I was young, we never thought twice about watching Travis Coates (the older brother in Disney’s 1957 film “Ole Yeller”) carrying a gun and hunting for food in post civil war Texas. I was raised to properly handle a gun when I was a boy in the 1960’s. Guns are properly used for sport and self-defense by millions of law abiding Americans.

I understand the argument the left uses to enact more gun control, but I, like the founders of our country, fundamentally distrust human nature in general and a federal government in particular.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for four colleagues, said the Constitution does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.”

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”

He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.”

Perhaps I could respectfully offer the honorable Justice John Paul Stevens a place to look, since he is having trouble finding it. Why does he suppose the founders created 3 branches of government composed of ‘checks and balances’, to essentially pit the interests of one branch of government against the others? Just to increase the paperwork? No, the framers of our constitution sought to fundamentally limit the power of ‘elected officials’ because of their right understanding of human nature, especially by those elected to very powerful positions. The framers even saw to limiting Justice Stevens power for the same reason.

Our forefathers believed that while government is necessary, to an extent, to fill a specific purpose, a powerful federal government can become dangerous to the freedom of ‘the state’, rightly understood as ‘polity’, the individuals making up the state. Therefore they said: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

From the decision:

“this is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed.

Thank you President Bush for appointing justices that understand and affirm the original intent of the founders of our great Republic. We owe you one.

OpenCarry.org