southchild

Writing at the Corner, Andy McCarthy has posted this letter from an angry conservative that pretty much sums up our attitude of the “turn the other cheek” Republicans who fail to ever stand up for themselves and their principles. We are infuriated and suspect you are as well. This reader nails it:

The Ifill issue is front and center. Last night on Brit Hume’s program, the consensus was that they all knew Gwen and she is a swell person, and of course she wouldn’t do anything partisan. Just where the hell are these people coming from? Day in and day out, out here in the real world we see obvious bias, obvious double standards and yet the Republicans and a lot of the “conservative” media either don’t see it, or if they do, they let it slide.

A few examples. Obviously the current flap of Gwen Ifill, Tom Brokaw, Jim Lehrer as moderators for presidential debates but never an O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh or Brit Hume. Why not?

A special prosecutor is appointed to investigate firings of 9 prosecutors but none was or will ever be appointed to find out why Clinton fired EVERY single prosecutor when he took office?? Republicans stand mute on this and it is infuriating.

Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Waters and the entire Black Caucus defend the running of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and prevent the very reforms which might have avoided the mess we are in today. Yet the MSM and Republicans are silent. Why aren’t these guys investigated, forced to step down and prosecuted as was Tom Delay?? Again silence from the White House, McCain and other Republicans.

These are just a few of the things that infuriate conservatives outside the beltway and New York City. We have the Republican Party asking us for money, yet I haven’t seen a single penny spent on demanding the Democrats adhere to the same standard Republicans are required to meet. Being a punching bag for liberals who constantly lie about you, constantly use inflammatory language (hate speech in some cases) and use any means necessary to gain power is no way to win elections. Yet this is the path the Republican Party takes time and time again. To say I am mad as hell about the Dems and the response of the Republicans to these liberal attacks is an understatement.

O’Reilly has an article on his web site that says “Conservative group drops Ayers, Rezko and Wright from their ad.” Why I ask?? These guys are terrorists, crooks and as anti-American as they come, yet those in a position to speak out remain mute!!

Enough. I don’t give a damn if the Fox media folk know Gwen and say she is a swell person. I don’t care if McCain thinks the Dems in the Senate and congress are his “good friends”, they sure as hell aren’t my good friends. In fact they work day in and day out to destroy all I hold dear, and tax me to pay for those in society who are too lazy and/or stupid to care for themselves….

Terence Jeffrey has a column today that illustrates the immorality of the House, and likely Senate, bailout bill. This bailout bill will reward the irresponsible borrowers who over-borrowed, overspent, and then defaulted on their mortgages. At the same time, the bill punishes the responsible citizens who didn’t make these mistakes.

This is madness. This is Socialism. Instead of redistributing income from those who earn it to those who don’t, this bill redistributes income from those who saved to those who blew it. This is unprecedented, immoral, and anti-American. This is the subsidization of irresponsibility, something we’d expect Democrats to support, but Republicans?

Are there any Congressmen, from either party, who represent responsible Americans?

Read Who Needs to Pay Their Mortgage and Who Doesn’t?

Will the U.S. Treasury Department help pay your mortgage or force you to help pay someone else’s? …

The Wall Street-Washington establishment is sending taxpayers this message: Stop harping about our failed past policies and unbridled greed. We have put a gun to the head of the U.S. economy. If you don’t give us what we want now, we will blow the economy away. We will kill all your hopes and dreams. We will wipe out the fruits of all your past work and sacrifice.

Give us $700 billion now — or else. …

Consider what the bailout bill that failed Monday envisioned the secretary of the treasury, and other federal agencies that ended up controlling these mortgages, doing with the bad ones.

“(T)he Secretary shall implement plans that seek to maximize assistance for homeowners … including term extensions, rate reductions (and) principal write downs,” the bill said.

“(T)he Federal property manager shall implement a plan that seeks to maximize assistance for homeowners,” it said. “In the case of a residential mortgage loan, modifications made under paragraph (1) may include — (A) reduction in interest rates; (B) reduction in loan principal; and (C) similar modifications.”

In other words, if your neighbor took out a $300,000 mortgage even though he could only afford a $200,000 mortgage, the federal government — which would now own your neighbor’s mortgage — could simply reduce what your neighbor owes from $300,000 to $200,000. And it could reduce his interest rate from 6.5 percent to 5.5 percent. And it could extend the time he has to pay from 30 years to 40 years.

What would this say to the people in the neighborhood who did not overextend themselves and who faithfully pay their mortgage every month? It would say: You’re a fool. Your profligate neighbor took the wiser course.

And it would also say: Please keep paying your taxes on time because we may need your money to cover the $100,000 we just cut from your neighbor’s mortgage.

Read on for a proposal that, while still a bailout, wouldn’t turn “the U.S. Treasury into the world’s largest mortgage broker.”

(Hat tip: GPBurdell)

My dear American friend

I AM NEEDING TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS AD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 700 BILLION OF YOUR DOLLARS (US). IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH HIGHLY REPUTABLE MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY IF MY POLITICAL PARTY WINS UPCOMING ELECTION, WHICH WE CERTAINLY WILL BECAUSE WE ARE IN CONTROLING OF THE HIGHEST SUPREME COURT. YOU MAY REMEMBER HIM AS A SENATOR AS LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S.

THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE. YOU MUST TRUST ME COMPLETELY AND NOT ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TRANSACTION. YOU HAVE MY WORD NO ONE WILL DO ANYTHING WRONG WITH THE MONEY.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED YOUR BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTH PERSONAGE WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED. YOU ARE THAT PERSONAGE.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN, GRANDCHILDREN AND THOSE YET UNBORN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THIS INFORMATION I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS WE PROMISE WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS AND PRODUCE A LONG-TERM RETURN ON INVESTMENT FOR YOU AND THOSE YOU LOVE.

Yours faithfully
Minister of Treasury H. Paulson

Joseph Calhoun, “In Times of Crisis, Trust Capitalism” (HT: powerline)

Last week Goldman Sachs raised $10 billion in new capital in one day. They sold $5 billion in preferred stock and warrants to Berkshire Hathaway and also completed a secondary offering of common stock that raised another $5 billion. Friday, JP Morgan raised $10 billion in a secondary offering to help pay for the Washington Mutual takeunder. Both of these offerings were oversubscribed, meaning that the companies could have raised more capital if they wanted. There is not a shortage of capital for well run financial companies. There is, however, a shortage of capital for companies that have acted irresponsibly with investor capital in the recent past. For some reason, our political leaders believe this is a failure of the market, but isn’t this what should be expected from rational investors? …

The biggest bank failure in the history of the United States happened last Thursday night and by Friday morning, it was business as usual. The only difference was the name on the door and the losses suffered by those unfortunate enough to invest in Washington Mutual bonds or stock. The taxpayers didn’t lose anything and depositors didn’t lose anything, only investors. That is how capitalism works in case everyone has forgotten.

The “crisis” we face today is not a creation of the market. Government intervention over many years (but especially the last year) is what brought us to the point where we’ve placed our hopes for economic recovery on the good intentions of a Congress facing re-election in a few weeks. There has been much commentary recently about the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the creation and expansion of the sub-prime mortgage market which many believe to be the cause of this mess. That criticism is certainly warranted, but little attention has been paid to the real culprit – the Federal Reserve. Furthermore, what attention there has been is concentrated on the role of Alan Greenspan rather than Ben Bernanke. While Alan Greenspan deserves his share of the blame, Bernanke’s contribution to this mess should not be minimized or excused. …

Now we face a situation where banks are not willing to lend to each other and have therefore become dependent on the Fed for daily liquidity. This is a direct result of the Fed’s actions. Banks will not lend to each other because they don’t know which ones are really in trouble. The rise in inter-bank lending rates is a rational market response to a lack of information. Furthermore, why pay those inter-bank rates when the Fed or ECB is offering easier terms? …

Now markets are waiting on pins and needles as the politicians haggle over the details of the latest bailout attempt by the Fed and Treasury. This has introduced another roadblock to the re-capitalization and reorganization of the financial industry. Companies that are in need of capital are waiting to see if the plan will bail them out of their difficulties. If Hank Paulson is willing to pay an above market price for their bad loans, why should they dilute their equity now? Why not wait until they can offload the bad paper on the taxpayer and raise capital at a better price? Why take Tony Soprano terms when Uncle Sam is willing to let the taxpayer take the hit for you?

You should read the rest of this article. It offers some unique perspectives into the role the Federal Reserve in this mess, including this gem:

“The government apparently believes that the key to economic recovery is to allocate limited resources in an inefficient manner. Does that make sense?”

Thomas Sowell:

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional “leaders” invited to the White House to devise a bailout “solution” are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the “soundness” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said “I do not see” any “possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury.”

Moreover, he said that the federal government has “probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing.”

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for “riding to the rescue” when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they “need to do more” to help subprime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

But the magic words “affordable housing” and the ugly word “redlining” led to politicians directing where loans and investments should go, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and various other coercions and threats.

Andy McCarthy:

This was a terrible bill. To take just a few particulars, why is there no reform of the government interventions that got us to this point in the first place? Why aren’t Fannie and Freddie being wound down — even after we’ve now had to make explicit the implicit, disastrous government guarantee? Why is Pelosi saying (as I noted in an earlier post) that the authority in the bill will allow the Treasury Department (perhaps soon an Obama Treasury Department) to take bad debt off the hands of mismanaged state and local governments?

Why don’t we have a firmer formula for how Paulson (or, again, an Obama Treasury Secretary) will determine the value of the toxic debt before the government starts throwing money at it. Now, I’ve heard all the arguments about how, for the bailout to “work,” a premium above current value would have to be paid. Even if I accept that as true for argument’s sake, however, are you telling me I am wrong to worry that this bill gives the Treasury Secretary unduly wide latitude to feed taxpayer money into businesses that should fail because they’ve been irresponsibly leveraged and utterly mismanaged?

Why does the government have to buy the securities? If liquidity is the problem, why can’t it make money available for loan, taking back collateral, placing the risk on the bad actors rather than the taxpayers, and letting market set a reasonable price for the bad debt by auction and other conventional methods. Most people will pay their mortgages so these “troubled assets” still have significant value. And there are buyers out there. The troubled entities are not selling at the price the market will bear because they (understandably) think they will get a wildly inflated price from the government — once again, perverting the market: penalizing responsible actors, rewarding the bad actors who brought us to this point, and keeping those bad actors in business.

Mark Levin:

Also, count me among those few here who want to thank the House Republicans for taking a bold stand against what had been a stampede on a scale I have never before witnessed on matters of huge consequence. Conservatism is more than a quaint belief-system to be embraced and debated over donuts at Starbucks. It is more than a list of talking points. It is the foundation of the civil society. The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution’s limits on governmental power. If conservatives don’t stand up to this, who will? If they don’t offer serious alternatives that address the current circumstances AND defend the founding principles, who will? The House Republicans have done both. And I, for one, thank them.

Incidentally, if you want to buy a home or car today you can. And if your credit is decent, you can get loans at a good rate. Last week we were told that if a deal was not struck by last Friday, our economy would collapse. It has not. That is not to say the evidence of economic troubles or worse should be ignored. It is to say that now is a time for reasoned decisions based on tried and true principles, not for abandoning them. I notice that the socialist, who, for the last 30 years, has insisted that private institutions make risky loans based on non-economic factors, still has not abandoned his policies. Socialism does not work. We shouldn’t support more of it.

Amen.

Read “Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer” by Jeffrey A. Miron — a Libertarian economist and senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University.

Congress has balked at the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the “troubled assets” of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.

This bailout was a terrible idea. Here’s why.

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This “moral hazard” generates enormous distortions in an economy’s allocation of its financial resources.

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street’s hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration’s claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.

If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.

The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.

Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.

So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

We’ve written about the causes of this crisis. Watch this devastating presentation with testimony straight from the mouths of the crooks and their enablers.

Fox is reporting that the bill may have passed had Nancy Pelosi not tried to blame this whole mess on the Bush Administration.

Opponents said part of the reason for the opposition from Republicans was what they termed a partisan speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said one GOP source. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt said he thinks Republicans could have provided a dozen more votes had Pelosi not given her speech.

Pelosi had said that Congress needed to pass the bill, even though it was an outgrowth of the “failed economic policies” of the last eight years.

“When was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion?” she asked. “It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.”

Thanks, Nancy!

UPDATE: Here’s Nancy’s “piss in the punch” speech (thanks, Michelle)

Here’s the Final vote results for roll call 674.

Michelle Malkin:

Breaking: It’s official. House rejects Trillion-Dollar-Plus Crap Sandwich

Remember, the Democrats could have passed this crap sandwich bill without a single Republican vote.

But they wanted cover from the Republicans.

They wanted the Sanction of their Victims.

Inspiring, eh?

If these clowns are happy, you’re about to be screwed.

We receive a variety of links, articles, opinions, etc. For example, a reader sent us this recent posting from a “conscience parents” group:

Greed and irresponsibility
Posted by: “laura h*****”
Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:58 am (PDT)
Hi,

We are facing a financial crisis as profound as any we have faced since the Great Depression, but there’s something you can do to make your voice heard right now:

http://my.barackobama.com/econrecovery

The Obama campaign is asking folks to support a responsible recovery plan that is fair to taxpayers and will fix our broken economic policies moving forward.

It’s actually a very simple plan:

* No Golden Parachutes — Taxpayer dollars should not be used to reward the irresponsible Wall Street executives who helmed this disaster.

* Main Street, Not Just Wall Street — Any bailout plan must include a payback strategy for taxpayers who are footing the bill and aid to innocent homeowners who are facing foreclosure.

* Bipartisan Oversight — The staggering amount of taxpayer money involved demands a bipartisan board to ensure accountability and oversight.

Join me and support these principles for economic recovery:

http://my.barackobama.com/econrecovery

Thanks

———
A user has sent this message from BarackObama.com. The sender’s name, email address, subject and message have not been verified.

Just for fun, here’s our response. If you happen to encounter this Obama form letter then please send our rebuttal. This rebuttal comes with no warranties and is “free” so long as the word “Obama” exists.

Our response:
Laura believes the way “to make your voice heard” is to go to Barack Obama’s website and spam this list with his political advertisements. The Internet makes such political activism really, really easy, but it’s too bad that independent thought and judgment are sacrificed to mouse-click advocacy.

Laura, your title suggests that greed and irresponsibility are at the heart of this crisis. You’re correct, but you assign blame to the wrong folks. This crisis started in 1999 when Fannie and Freddie eased credit requirements for folks in the sub-prime market. Don’t take my word for it, read the whole, sad story in this 1999 New York Times article:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Here’s a quote from Fannie CEO Franklin Raines (who would later be an adviser to…Obama!):

‘’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.'’

Later in the article, we have a prediction of where this would lead:

‘’From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'’ said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ‘’If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'’

Guess who saw this coming and tried to reform it in 2005? That would be John McCain, and the legislation was S.190 which you can read here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN00190:@@@P

Who stopped McCain? That would be the Democrats, led particularly by Barney Frank who complained that it would prevent poor people from getting mortgages. Why would the Democrats stop the reform? It could be because top Democratic Senators were the top recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie. Those top recipients were, in order, Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. Consider a quote from this article from the New York Times in 2003. Here’s the article,

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&scp=1&sq=%22barney+frank%22&st=nyt

And here’s the quote from none other than Barney Frank:

‘’These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'’ said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ‘’The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

So, in 2003, Frank had it exactly wrong. By 2005, McCain had it exactly right, but he was stopped from reforming Fannie and Freddie by Democrats like Frank which leads us to 2008 when it all collapsed.

Were there CEO’s and other business leaders who took advantage of this? Absolutely. For example, Fannie’s CEO — Frank Raines — made over $90 million in his six years there. He and his colleagues (like Jamie Gorelick) made this much money by producing false reports which allowed them to incur huge bonuses.

A lot of small banks also loans to bad borrowers because they knew they could sell them up the chain to Fannie and Freddie. In many cases, the banks that made these loans were pressured (some would say blackmailed) by Community Activist groups like ACORN who were empowered by the Feds under the Community Reinvestment Act (initially passed in 1977). Guess which community organizer worked with groups like ACORN to do this? Right again, Obama.

Laura, your message from the Obama campaign includes this gem: “It’s actually a very simple plan”.

This reminds me of a famous quote by H.L. Mencken:

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

There’s nothing simple about fixing this mess, regardless of what Obama says.

What is simple is understanding how we got here. To entrust the people who created this mess with fixing it is to trust the Fox to guard the Hen house.

No thank you.

This is pretty funny, in a sad and pathetic kind-of-way. Still, it may be good for a laugh in a week that’s been short on humor. Check out Michelle Malkin’s update of a classic fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper, 2008 edition:

With what looks like imminent passage of the Mother of All Bailouts (following on the heels of a year’s worth of government-funded rescues of private homeowners, lenders, insurers, and the automakers), Washington has turned Aesop’s famous fable about prudence and hard work on its head. The time is ripe for a revised 2008 edition of “The Ant and the Grasshopper:”

In a meadow on a hot summer’s day, a Grasshopper was chirping and carousing his time away. He watched scornfully as an Ant nearby struggled to store up large kernels of food and build a secure nest. The Ant pulled overtime shifts to pay off his loans and accumulate retirement funds for the future.

“Give it a rest,” the Grasshopper said. “Why bother saving and slaving and toiling and moiling? Let’s party!” The Ant demurred: “I am planning ahead for winter and you should do the same.” The Grasshopper blew off the Ant, squandered his supplies the rest of the season, and abandoned his home while on vacation (paid for by tapping every last cent of his home equity gain) instead of holding down a job.

When winter came, the Grasshopper’s pantry was empty and his shelter ruined from neglect. The Ant, weary from planting, harvesting, and stocking up for months, was dining comfortably in his nest.

Cold, hungry, jobless, facing foreclosure, and up to his two pairs of eyeballs in debt, the Grasshopper limped to the Association of Community Winged Insects for Rescue Now and demanded recourse. The office was swamped with thousands just like him. ACWIRN immediately put the Grasshopper to work registering dead ants as new voters.

Keep reading. It gets funnier.

That is the title of this John Hood piece posted at National Review’s the Corner. It is a must-read. Hood offers some alternatives that fiscal conservatives will appreciate because they are grounded in the realities of market principles which have been studied and utilized for hundreds of years. These are dangerous times for our Republic, and we should heed Hood’s concluding words,

“A conservative should never abandon his principles in a time of crisis. He should employ them. That’s what makes them principles, not fashions.”

Principles And The Case For Federal Action:

As others here have said, while critics of the Paulson Plan — as well as any scary leftist mutation of it — are abundant and proliferated, few seem to be arguing for federal inaction. They do believe that timely and significant federal action is needed. They just don’t like the specifics or the precedent proposed by the administration.

This should not be interpreted, or pitched, as a “rejection of market ideology.” I cringe every time I see conservatives seek street cred with clueless but exultant journalists by dutifully admitting that the country or the economy “trumps” their supposed market ideology. Whether intentionally or not, these politicians and commentators are making a horrid situation even worse. Make no mistake: this moment isn’t just fraught with economic peril. It has the potential to be an inflection point in American political history, the beginning of a new and painful bear market for liberty.

Some kind of federal reaction is warranted because the federal government is a major cause of the crisis, and taxpayers are already on the hook for a good chunk of the financial failout. For years, Congress protected and egged on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while refusing even to consider rethinking the mortgage-interest tax deduction that encourages investment in residential housing over other forms of capital formation. Federal policymakers compelled financial institutions to take on additional mortgage risk through regulatory blackmail (thanks, Barney Frank and ACORN!). The Federal Reserve moved its eye off the price-stability ball and alternatively loosened and tightened the money supply in whipsaw fashion. Millions of people responded to these perverse federal policies by taking on additional risk and steering more capital from more-productive investments to the housing market. To argue that because Washington has screwed things up in the past, it should stand back now and see what happens may be tempting, but it is based on an old fallacy. A good analogy is an arrow wound. If someone shoots you with a barbed arrow, your life may be threatened. That doesn’t mean that the best response is just to yank it out, which will further imperil your life.

To say that Washington must act, of course, is not to say that it should allow itself to be stampeded into an expensive, counterproductive bill. Great care should be taken to minimize moral hazard, further distortions of the financial markets and banking industry, and the further erosion of economic freedom. While remaining pragmatic, conservatives ought to try to reduce the taxpayers’ exposure, avoid Hayekian nightmares about Treasury lawyers pretending to second-guess the collective wisdom of the world’s investors, and insert provisions that may actually have long-term benefits.

For example, why not work for a package that reduce the size of the federal debt purchase, suspends perverse accounting rules, and immediately slashes the marginal tax rate on saving and investment? Frankly, it doesn’t make sense to me that authorizing $700 billion in Treasury debt plays is the only thing that can avert crisis, but a combination of, say, only one-third of that amount to the Treasury and the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars in other responses — immediately lower taxes on capital and higher asset values through accounting reform — would be trivial and ineffective.

You know why I (and many other conservatives) think that way? Because our judgment is informed by our principles. An ideology is simply a way of understanding how the world works. If it assumes Earthly perfection, ignores contradictory data, and amounts to an article of faith rather than a set of empirical insights, such an ideology could indeed become a barrier to understanding and necessary action. But market principles aren’t abstract theory or religious dogma. They are based on decades of modern empirical research, hundreds of years of political practice, and thousands of years of human experience and common sense. There were good reasons to suspect the Paulson Plan, hatched in a few days by well-meaning people in panic, because we know from history how such panicky policies tend to turn out. There were good reasons to doubt what Wall Street lobbyists and Fannie/Freddie apologists are saying about the crisis, because they have strong incentives to spin us and avert our eyes from their own culpability.

Many supporters of the Paulson Plan are in thrall to an ideology, essentially Keynesianism, that tells them that problems like the current financial crisis are caused by irrational animal spirits. They have diagnosed America has having an economic psychosis, from which it can only be raised by wise government therapists, just as Keynes believed that the way out of the worldwide depression of the 1930s was to trick people with pump-priming gimmicks. Critics know better. They understand that investors will respond rationally to the prospect of higher future returns on capital. They further understand that government bureaucrats are highly unlikely to possess superior understanding of and make better decisions about how to manage the nation’s stock of mortgages and its banking and financial firms.

A conservative should never abandon his principles in a time of crisis. He should employ them. That’s what makes them principles, not fashions.

Did you hear about the $25 billion bailout of GM, Ford, and Chrysler today? You know, those inept, beleaguered, union-handicapped dinosaurs in The People’s Republic of Michigan.

A $25 Billion Lifeline for GM, Ford, and Chrysler:

In Washington these days, an 11-figure expenditure barely attracts notice.

With Congress preoccupied with the massive, $700 billion bailout plan for the financial industry, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have finally secured Part One of their own federal rescue plan. A bill set to be passed by Congress and signed by President Bush as early as this weekend—separate from the controversial Wall Street bailout plan—includes $25 billion in loans for the beleaguered Detroit automakers and several of their suppliers. “It seemed like a lot when we first started pushing this,” says Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, one of the bill’s sponsors. “Suddenly, it seems so small.”

But please don’t call it a “bailout”—Detroit is too proud for that. Exact details will come later, but the loans would probably amount to at least $5 billion for each of the Detroit 3, plus smaller amounts for suppliers. That would allow them to borrow money at interest rates as low as 4 percent—a steep discount compared with the double-digit rates they’re paying now. Over several years, the automakers could save hundreds of millions in financing costs. Plus, they’ll have five years before they have to start repaying the loans.

It might seem like a stealth rescue, but the plan has been in the works for at least 18 months. Approval for the loans was first included in last year’s Energy Independence Act. Earlier this year, the automakers sought a first installment of loans totaling about $6 billion. But the nationwide credit crunch severely crimped their ability to borrow, and besides, next to bailouts like $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a mere $6 billion started to seem unduly modest. So Detroit raised the ante to $25 billion, the most allowed under current law.

Some details of the program:

Keep reading for the details. It will make you sick.

As expected, Michelle Malkin is all over this one too.

Did your Representative vote to steal your money for this crass Socialism?

Come November, remind them.

(Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg)

Mets Too Big To Fail:

The New York Mets are suffering a stunning late season collapse once again. Leading by three games just a week ago, they are now a game-and-a half behind the first place Phillies and without a drastic change, the Mets could be shut out of the playoffs altogether.

This historic collapse is seen by some as warranting a government bailout of the Mets…before things get worse.

The collapse brings to mind the epic catastrophe last year where the Mets were seven games up with just two weeks left in the season and then went on to lose game after game and finally falling out of the playoffs with a loss on the last game of the year.

But now the Mets are petitioning the federal government for funds to hire relief pitchers. “If we collapse and don’t make the playoffs again, thousands of hearts will be broken. Think of the children” said one Mets front office executive. “Think of the seniors who’ve been waiting over twenty years for us to win the World Series.”

Other sources say the team not making the playoffs would effect local vendors as well. “When there’s no game I don’t make any money,” said a man who identified himself as Tony and runs a parking lot near the stadium. Local sandwich makers said that perhaps a ton of pastrami would rot in area delicatessens without playoff games to boost sales.

Check out John Stossel’s column today, What Happened to Market Discipline?.

It’s a great article, and it presents points that you’ll never hear from the “Mainstream Media”. Mainly, though, Stossel explodes the MSM myth that the current financial meltdown is a result of “no regulation”. You have to be really uninformed and gullible to believe that MSM and Obama “explanation” (for more background on the myth, read this).

The demagoguery Stossel describes is possible because (1) the MSM will do anything to cover for the failings and corruption of the Democrats and (2) most Americans are too economically ignorant to distinguish propaganda from fact. All of these decades of dumbing-down government “education” are paying huge dividends to the Democrat-Socialist Party.

Barack Obama says, “[Today’s economic problems are] a stark reminder of the failures of … an economic philosophy that sees any regulation at all as unwise and unnecessary”.

What? Does that mean that until last week the Bush administration embraced the free market? Nonsense. Governments at all levels have regulated and subsidized the housing and financial industries for years. Nothing changed under President Bush.

The government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created precisely to interfere with the housing and mortgage markets. In effect, Freddie and Fannie diverted money to people who wouldn’t have qualified for mortgages in a real private market.

Had actual private companies performed these activities, they would have been subject to market checks. But they were not. The results were predictable.

Now that it’s all tumbling down, the politicians and pundits blame the free market.

It’s not simply misunderstanding. It’s demagoguery by people who will never admit that their “progressive” social policies have spawned a taxpayer bill that boggles the mind.

This is a story not of private enterprise but of cynical political opportunism. Moral hazard — the poisonous mix of private profits and taxpayer-covered losses — is what you get when politicians indulge their hubris to redesign society. The bailout of those companies holding bad mortgages — big-business socialism — sets us up for the next crisis.

Read the whole thing here.

The $700 billion blank check to Secretary Paulson must be killed.

Throwing good money after bad is stupid.

There’s so much wrong with this bill that we don’t know where to start, so here’s some information for you to digest.

First, it helps to know how we got here. Read “How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis” by Kevin Hassett for a sobering history lesson:

Why did Bear Stearns fail, and how does that relate to AIG? It all seems so complex.

But really, it isn’t. Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.

Hassett then goes on to describe the terrible mess Fannie and Freddie were in in 2005, how Alan Greenspan predicted the current crisis, how John McCain “was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess”, and how the Senate Democrats scuttled the whole thing. He also notes that Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton received hundreds of thousands of campaign contributions from…Surprise!…Fannie and Freddie! They were the top four recipients.

Also don’t miss the Wall Street Journal’s analysis on this crisis, Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess.

If Americans weren’t so incredibly ignorant about economics, there would be a revolution right now.

Now that you know how it happened, here’s why the “Mother of All Bailouts” must be killed. First, read Newt Gingrich:

If a Democratic administration were proposing this plan, Republicans would realize that having Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Dodd (the largest recipient of political funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) as chairman of the Banking Committee guarantees that the Obama-Reid-Pelosi-Paulson plan that will emerge will be much worse as legislation than it started out as the Paulson proposal.

If this were a Democratic proposal, Republicans would remember that the Democrats wrote a grotesque housing bailout bill this summer that paid off their left-wing allies with taxpayer money, which despite its price tag of $300 billion has apparently failed as of last week, and could expect even more damage in this bill.

But because this gigantic power shift to Washington and this avalanche of taxpayer money is being proposed by a Republican administration, the normal conservative voices have been silent or confused.

It’s time to end the silence and clear up the confusion.

Congress has an obligation to protect the taxpayer.

Congress has an obligation to limit the executive branch to the rule of law.

Congress has an obligation to perform oversight.

Congress was designed by the Founding Fathers to move slowly, precisely to avoid the sudden panic of a one-week solution that becomes a 20-year mess.

There are four major questions that have to be answered before Congress adopts a new $700 billion burden for the American taxpayer. On each of these questions, I believe Congress’s answer will be “no” if it slows down long enough to examine the facts.

Read the entire article to understand Gingrich’s “four major questions” that must be answered. It’s an excellent and sobering analysis of why this bill must die.

Finally, read Michelle Malkin’s column today, Kill the bailout: Illegal immigration and the mortgage mess on just how absurd this situation is. If we don’t learn from this nightmare, it will only be repeated on a greater scale a few decades hence.

The Mother of All Bailouts has many fathers. As panicked politicians prepare to fork over a trillion dollars in taxpayer funding to rescue the financial industry, they’ve fingered regulation, deregulation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, both Bushes, greedy banks, greedy borrowers, greedy short-sellers, and minority home ownership mau-mauers (can’t call ‘em greedy, that would be racist) for blame.

But there’s one giant paternal elephant in the room that has slipped notice: How illegal immigration, crime-enabling banks, and open-borders Bush policies fueled the mortgage crisis.

It’s no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave – Loudon County, Virginia, California’s Inland Empire, Stockton, San Joaquin Valley, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, for starters — also happen to be some of the nation’s largest illegal alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure.

The details are amazing and depressing. Along with Michelle, we also agree with Mark Krikorian’s observation that Credit is not a civil right.

How far have we sunk?

Democrats like to remind us how “tolerant” they are. They are the party of “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” If you believe that, you’re choking on the Kool-Aid. To leftists, women and minorities who stray from the rigidly-ideological liberal plantation are sellouts to their “kind”. They are Uncle Toms or, maybe, “Uncle Moms”. For example, Sarah Palin “isn’t a woman”, Clarence Thomas “isn’t black”, but Bill Clinton was our first black president.

This article from the New York Sun, Palin Pick Puts Many Women on the Verge, has some unbelievable confessions from deranged leftists.

“All of my women friends, a week ago Monday, were on the verge of throwing themselves out windows,” an author and political activist, Nancy Kricorian of Manhattan, said yesterday. “People were flipping out. … Every woman I know was in high hysteria over this. Everyone was just beside themselves with terror that this woman could be our president — our potential next president.” …

A posting on a New York-based Web site for women, Jezebel.com, spoke of unbridled anger. “What I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay, murderous, rage,” an associate editor at Jezebel, Jessica Grose, wrote just after the Republican convention wrapped up. “When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull.”

Ms. Grose was not alone. More than 700 comments poured in, many from women who said they were experiencing a visceral hostility to Mrs. Palin that they were struggling to explain.

“When I see people crowing about her ‘acceptable’ speech last Wednesday … I literally want to vomit with rage,” a comment from Anibundel said.

“I am shocked by the depths of my hatred for this woman,” another commenter, CJWeimar, wrote.

“It is impossible for me not to read about her in the newspaper in the subway every morning on my way to work and not come into the office angry and wanting to kick things,” a commenter using the name ChampagneofBeers wrote. “My boxing class definitely helps.”

Wow. What nice, tolerant people. Perhaps “they were struggling to explain” their hostility because they are DERANGED! Emotionally, these women are children.

Grow up, girls, before you do throw yourselves out windows.

Now those gals are rabid, but they’re nothing compared to Sandra Bernhard. She refers to Sarah Palin as, “Uncle Women,” a “turncoat b—h” and a “whore.”

She also warns Sarah Palin “not to come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers.”

Ahhh…Democrats. Love, Harmony, Tolerance, Diversity, Equal rights for women. You’ve heard it all before.

And every bit of it is bullshit.

Obama and Biden have pledged to abolish the Bush tax cuts and raise taxes on households with incomes greater than $250,000. You probably already know that. This is classic income redistribution, and as Bill O’Reilly points out in the quoted interview below, “It’s a socialist tenet.” George Bernard Shaw put it this way:

“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. “

Barack Obama and Joe Biden know that most Americans are not Socialists and do not like the idea of the government seizing money from some people and giving it to others. Not only is that immoral (and illegal if you try it yourself), but it’s just plain anti-American. That’s what they do in the Socialists countries of Europe, not America.

So, these two charlatans are trying to re-brand this tired, 60’s-era Socialism as “neighborly” and “patriotic.”

From Seeing through Obamanomics:

On Sept. 8, Fox News broadcast an interview between Obama and Bill O’Reilly that focused on taxation and the economy. Obama repeated his pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, while raising taxes on the tiny fraction who earn more than $250,000.

“That’s class warfare,” O’Reilly objected. “You’re taking the wealthy in America, the big earners . . . you’re taking money away from them and you’re giving it to people who don’t. That’s called income redistribution. It’s a socialist tenet. Come on, you know that.”

“Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill,” Obama replied. “Teddy Roosevelt supported a progressive income tax.” He acknowledged that he doesn’t enjoy paying taxes either - “you think I like writing the check?” - but that “there are certain things we’ve got to do.” His tax proposal, he explained, was a matter of civility:

“If I am sitting pretty and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can’t, what’s the big deal for me to say, I’m going to pay a little bit more? That’s neighborliness.” If that is Obama’s rationale for making the tax code even more steeply progressive than it already is, it’s no wonder voters are having second thoughts about his economic aptitude. …

Taxation is not generosity, it is confiscation at gunpoint. Does Obama not understand the difference?

Yes he does, but he hopes you don’t. This is like calling theft “neighborly.” Taxation is forced confiscation, and this particular tax plan is, by admission of its anxious authors, all about income redistribution.

From Biden: Wealthy Americans Must Pay More Taxes to Show Patriotism:

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says that paying higher taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans.

Biden says he and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama want to “take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.”

Under the Democrats’ economic plan, people earning more than $250,000 a year would pay more in taxes while those earning less — the vast majority of American taxpayers — would receive a tax cut.

Biden told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday that, in his words, “it’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”

“Patriotic?” Perhaps in the former USSR. What’s patriotic about force? Look, this isn’t rocket science:

“Mandatory volunteerism” isn’t volunteering.

“Forced confiscation” isn’t charity.

Don’t confuse individual choice with government force.

Michelle also notes Obama and Biden’s Orwellian terms for their income redistribution plan.

Here’s more analysis on Obama and Biden’s doublespeak.

Here’s the latest news from Iran concerning the wonderful, peace-loving religion of Islam. Iranian Majlis Ratifies Bill Requiring Death Penalty For Muslims Who Convert To Another Religion:

Last week, Iran’s Majlis ratified a bill under which any Muslim who converts to another religion would be put to death, with no possibility of pardon.

The bill was approved by a majority of 196 to 7, with two abstentions.

The few Iranian media outlets that covered the issue played down their reports, while on others, such as the Majlis website and the website of the conservative daily Resalat, the reports were removed after a few hours.

Under the bill, anyone declaring publicly that he was knowingly abandoning Islam of his own free will face the death penalty.

The bill is now in permanent force, after being extended every five years since its temporary ratification in 1991.

It should be noted that a ruling by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, states that any Muslim who converts to another religion is subject to the death penalty, but until now this ruling has not been anchored in civil law.

Source: Iran, Iran, September 10, 2008; Radio Farda, Europe, September 9, 2008

One of our favorite writers and thinkers, Victor Davis Hanson, sums up the pathology of Obama Compulsive Disorder. It’s quite a spectacle to watch. Like a two-year old, they simply cannot control themselves.

The hallowed NBC brand of old is now devolved into MSNBC’s Matthews-Olbermann embarrassment. The once revered Atlantic Monthly now hosts blogger Andrew Sullivan trafficking in rumors that Gov. Palin’s daughter really delivered her Down Syndrome child, and then hires an unhinged photographer (best known previously for making children cry to make political statements) who brags post facto that she tried to subvert her own cover photos of McCain, before posting creepy photo-shopped out-takes of him on her website [here — ed]. To read a NY Times columnist is to be told ad nauseam that Gov. Palin is a bumpkin hockey mom. Whether an US magazine cover picture of Palin, or the Washington Post’s recycling old stories about Cindy McCain, the result is always the same: a concerted effort to ensure an Obama election.

The university crowd weighs in with op-eds warning us about white rural culture and the toxic landscapes that raised Sarah Palin, or why she is a counterfeit woman who piggybacked on the heroic work of pro-abortion pioneers. Every day another Hollywood dimwit—a Matt Damon, Lindsay Lohan, or Chevy Chase—attacks Palin or McCain in a fashion as crude as it is half-educated and incoherent.

Is it that hard to see, then, why McCain is dead-even or ahead—even when the incumbent Republican brand is suffering by association to war, economic uncertainty, and now financial meltdown?

There is a growing public anger at the petty amateurish biases of those who claim they are sophisticated and subtle; and it is not just that they sympathize with a smeared Palin, but are angry that the media thinks they are so stupid not to catch on. The odder thing still is that the media obsession has turned into some sort of compulsive disorder—they know that they are way out of bounds; know that they are hurting their own candidate Obama— and they know that they simply can’t and won’t quit now.

Hanson’s right. Despite the damage they’re inflicting on the Dali Bama, his Obamatons are incapable of quitting. The late-stage Obama Compulsive Disorder is aggravated by a fatal case of Foot-in-Mouth Disease.

Keep it up. We love it.

It must be tough to be a left-wing nutjob these days. The excitement of Sarah Palin has the Obamatons absolutely wrecked with fear, and so they resort to spreading vicious rumors and lies. One of the lies that has the Socialists Against Sarah most worked-up is that she tried to censor library books.

Factcheck.org shoots down that lie in Sliming Palin:

She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has said Palin asked a “What if?” question, but the librarian continued in her job through most of Palin’s first term.

Michelle Malkin’s syndicated article today, The book-banners Hollywood ignores documents the numerous case of real censorship by leftists. They are hypocrites of the worst kind. Michelle nails it when she points out that this is a case of “Classic projection”.

They are getting desperate, and it’s so fun to watch them squirm.

And now we know what keeps feminist playwrights like Eve Ensler (”The Vagina Monologues”) awake at night. Not Iranian nuclear ambitions or al Qaeda beheading videos. She is haunted by nightmares of Bible-thumping, book-burning Sarah Palin. A McCain/Palin ticket “is one of the most dangerous choices” of her lifetime, Ensler seethed in her viral call-to-arms e-mail, because “Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking,” The evidence: “From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference.”

Classic projection. Damon, Ensler and the anti-censorship crusaders are the unthinking ones who can’t tolerate independence, ambiguity and difference. The rumormongers continue to spread a bogus banned book list attributed to Palin that includes books not even published at the time she served as mayor. No city records corroborate Internet reports that she tried to keep anti-homosexual books, as gay lobbying organizations have claimed, or any other books off government-funded library shelves available to children. …

If book banning is such a life-and-death issue to these celebrity foot soldiers for free speech, where were they four years ago when John Kerry and his rabid minions were pressuring Regnery Publishing to withdraw “Unfit for Command” from bookstores? Where were they when members of the Borders Books Employee Union were openly advocating sabotaging book sales? A message on the union’s members-only website urged:

“You guys don’t actually HAVE to sell the thing!

“Just ‘carelessly’ hide the boxes, ‘accidentally’ drop them off pallets, ‘forget’ to stock the ones you have, and then suggest a nice Al Franken or Michael Moore book as a substitute …

“I don’t care if these Neandertals (sic) in fancy suits get mad at me, they aren’t regular customers anyway. Other than ‘Left Behind’ books, they don’t read. Anything you can do to make them feel unwelcome is only fair. They are the people pushing retailers to cut costs, don’t forget. And they would censor your speech, your books, your music in a heartbeat, so give them a taste of it!”

Read on for many more examples of real liberal censorship as opposed to make believe Sarah Palin censorship.