Because I Blogged

Good things have happened!

The Bailout is dead. Ding, dong the bailout is dead!


And the only reason is because I started blogging again. In 2003, 2004,5,6 and 7, not only would that shit have passed, the Republicans would have torn to shreds any Democrat trying to oppose this thievery and Sean Hannity and Bill and Rush would have danced on their graves for eighteen hours everyday talking shit about them to prove that Bush could do whatever he likes, as he's been doing. Which is why Bush put in one his standard The Hell With the Rule of Law Provisions:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Something like a pimp!

Mess around 2002-2007, he'da signed this into law overnight, released a one paragraph blurb to the media the next day and kept it moving. But its a new day. I'm on the case and they are afraid, very afraid. Too bad I didn't start blogging in time to help Ron Paul win.

WOLF BLITZER ("Late Edition" host): What do you say to the president who wants you and your fellow Republicans and Democrats to quickly pass this $700 billion bailout package?

PAUL: Well, I think that's a mistake because we don't have the money. But that doesn't mean you have to do nothing. I mean, we could reform the system. We could return to sound money. We could balance our budget. We could change our foreign policy. We could take care of our people at home. We could lower taxes.

There's a lot of things that we can do. But the worst thing that we can do is perpetuate the bad policies that gave us this trouble in the first place, and that is that we no longer, over the last quite a few decades, believed in free-market capitalism. Capital is supposed to come from savings. We're supposed to work hard and save.

As a matter of fact, the Chinese work hard, right now, and they save, and they're buying up the world. But we borrow and spend and consume, and now it's caught up to us and it's undermining our whole system. ... So this $700 billion is not going to do it.

Paul also argued that ...

... contrary to the White House's contention, this plan does not help Main Street.

"This is Wall Street in big trouble and sucking in Main Street, now, and dumping all the bills on Main Street. ... And you can't solve the problem of inflation, which is the creation of money and credit out of thin air, by more money and credit out of thin air, and not changing policy. We have to change basic policy.

"Yes, it would be painful, but it wouldn't last so long. What they're doing now, they're propping up a failed system so the agony lasts longer. They're doing exactly what we did in the Depression."

"So, yes, there are going to be losses, but everybody lived beyond their means when the prices of houses were going up. Nobody cared about it. They kept borrowing against it. Oh, yes, that was fine and dandy. Everybody was making money, and the owner of the home kept borrowing and living beyond their means. Now they have to live beneath their means.

"What the government is doing now -- and this new program is trying to prop up prices. You want the price structure to adjust. You want the price of houses to go down. You don't want to fix the price of housing. You can't price-fix. We've had too much of that.

"We need a market economy. We need to believe in ourselves. We need to believe and understand how the economy got us -- how the government got us into this mess. And believe me, it wouldn't be that tough. It would be a bad year. But, this way, it's going to be a bad decade."

Paul had nothing but disdain for Republican presidential nominee John McCain's suggestion to create a new government entity to deal with the crisis, calling it "just more of the same, more government, more programs, more spending, more regulations, trying to prop up a system that has been undermined."

He did say that Democratic candidate Barack Obama "has a pretty good grasp on how to attack this politically and go after McCain, but he doesn't have any answer. He's not talking about the Federal Reserve system. He's not talking about balanced budgets. He's not talking about bringing troops home from Afghanistan."

And, as Paul has said before, his choice for president will be "neither one of those two. They don't offer any alternatives."

GWB's Greatest Misses Archive No.5,983 : "The Bailout"

(Just a quick post because I have work tomorrow but this must be chronicled before it is Whirled Dervishly.)

The Trillion Dollar Wall Street Bailout Bummer of '08 is 100% George Bush's. He started early with that "bipartisan" shit so he could pin it on the Democrats ultimately but rest assured, this was his idea to fix the mess caused by his party's irresponsible, trifling and unrealistic financial model.

Bush pushes quick bailout bill passage

Published: Sept. 22, 2008 at 11:50 AM

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Failure by Congress to act on the Wall Street bailout will have consequences beyond the markets it's designed to save, U.S. President George Bush said Monday. While he said he understood there may be differences on the details of the $700 billion plan to fix chaotic conditions on Wall Street, Bush in a statement said "it would not be understandable if members of Congress sought to use this emergency legislation to pass unrelated provisions or to insist on provisions that would undermine the effectiveness of the plan." Among other things, the three-page bill gives Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson total authority and raises the debt ceiling. U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said on CBS's "The Early Show" members of Congress think "we're going to need this level of financing for this, and we want to give (Paulson) the authority to do this." However, Congress is concerned about accountability, that taxpayers are footing the bill and homeowners because "the core of this problem is still the foreclosure crisis," Dodd said. "I think we can" provide Paulson authority as well as safeguard taxpayers and homeowners, Dodd said. "It's important we act quickly, but it's more important ... that we act responsibly in this as well. In his statement, Bush cautioned: "Failure to act would have broad consequences far beyond Wall Street. It would threaten small business owners and homeowners on Main Street."

And....

Doubts grow over US bank rescue plan

By Rob Lever

Agence France-Presse

September 23, 2008 07:39am

A PROPOSED $US700 billion ($830 billion) bailout for the banking industry leaves many questions unanswered, but has prompted fears about giving the US government unprecedented power to intervene in the economy, analysts said Monday.

The plan would allow the US Treasury to sell new debt to purchase the vast amounts of mortgage securities and other "toxic'' assets that have caused a freezeup of the financia

l system.

Markets welcomed the announcement of the plan last week, but analysts say the sobering reality may make it highly complex to implement. Some critics say it gives unparalleled authority to the government in the finance system.

The plan is "three pages long'' and "asks for a staggering sum of money with wide-ranging powers to buy the broadest amount of mortgage-related securities with a minimal of oversight,'' said Andrew Busch at BMO Capital Markets.

"This is a huge leap of faith and I suspect that leaders of Congress and the presidential candidates will urge caution or act cautiously.''

One key question is how the government will value the dodgy mortgage-backed paper that the banking

system refuses to buy.

"The Treasury did not provide much detail on how the assets will be priced, other than through market mechanisms where possible,'' said economist Brian Bethune at Global Insight.

"We expect discounts on asset transactions will be anywhere from 20 per cent to 80 per cent, depending on the quality of the assets or the asset package involved.''

Some analysts point out that if The Treasury pays fair value -- Merrill Lynch, for example, sold some of its distressed securities for 22 cents on the dollar -- it could create fresh losses for banks and lead to more failures.

Mark Zandi at Economy.com said the idea was positive but may be hard to implement.

"In practice, a reverse auction for mortgage assets may be tricky to pull off,'' he said. "Auctioning mortgage-backed securities could prove especially problematic, since each security is so idiosyncratic.''

Beyond the technical questions, the plan dubbed by some as "the mother of all bailouts'' has raised hackles among some who fear it gives too much power to the government in the financial markets, especially with a clause providing immunity from lawsuits.

Robert Brusca at FAO Economics said the bailout plan "really isn't a plan and may not bail anything out ... The crux of it seems to be to dump the losses on taxpayers.'

"It gives the Treasury imperial power with respect to a simply huge amount of funds,'' said Yves Smith, a financial analyst with the website Naked Capitalism. "Thi

s is a financial coup d'etat, with the only limitation the 700-billion-dollar balance sheet figure.''

Some lawmakers also were sceptical about the carte blanche authority the proposal would give the government.

Texas Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling said lawmakers should carefully study options before approving the plan.

"Congress is being asked to support an uncertain entity, costing an uncertain amount of dollars, for an uncertain duration,'' he said.

"My fear is that taxpayers will be left with the mother of all debts, the federal government becomes the lender and guarantor of last resort, and our nation finds itself on the slippery slope to socialism.''

Despite the protests, many expect the plan to be approved to help stave off a further meltdown of the financial system with dire economic consequences.

"We were on the edge of the abyss last week,'' said Ed Yardeni at Yardeni Research.

"The question is whether so much government intervention will avert the most dreaded consequences of Wall Street's excesses, namely a financial meltdown and an economic depression .... The answer, I think is that it will work, and that the economy should grow next year.''

And...

Oil price jumps $25 in a day

By Javier Blas and Chris Flood in London

Published: September 22 2008 21:15 | Last updated: September 22 2008 23:05

Crude oil prices jumped $25 a barrel on Monday – the largest one-day rise – as financial investors betting on falling oil prices were forced to cover their positions ahead of the expi

ry of the current benchmark futures contract.

The jump to an intraday high of $130 a barrel – a rise of about $40 a barrel from last week’s low – was exacerbated by a weakening US dollar and data showing w

eaker supplies from Mexico, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks and surging imports by China.

But don't worry, there's still cookies and punch for all in the waiting room. And eye makeup. Lots of eye makeup...

And cake...of course!

Rather Than Just Admit

that the Republican economic platform (no taxes, no regulations, corporate welfare, no safety nets for real Americans while lavishly splurging on endless wars) simply cannot work, the right wing spin machine found itself whirling dervishly while the stock market crashed and major Wall Street players, such as Lehman Brothers went belly-up.


I realized in about 2003 that the housing sector was the only thing holding up the Bush economy. We were spending billions a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were no real jobs, all of the manufacturing and entry level jobs had been outsourced to China and India and all of the spending was fueled by credit and home equity lines.

The housing "boom" saw house prices skyrocket from the $100k-$300k range in most neighborhoods in New York City to $400k-infinity, almost overnight. "New Construction" (while lacking insulation and adding to the stress on the supposedly overburdened power grid) sprang up like weeds, overnight on every block in the city. All of a sudden rehabbed crackhouses in East New York, Bushwick, East Flatbush and Jamaica were being sold for $500,000 and $600,000.

And how to afford these overpriced, uninsulated and shoddily built "cribs"?


Why- with no credit check, no money down, no income verification, and no collateral based loans of course!











No more of the whole messy process: verifying you work, pay your bills and can afford to be on the hook for half to three quarters of a million dollars, for what?!!! And actually appraising this house to make sure its worth half to three quarters of a million dollars? Thanks to de-regulation, no need, for the market has taken care of that! If someone is willing to pay half to three quarters of a million dollars in the "free market", then obviously that means the house is worth half to three quarters of a million dollars! Duh!!!



Throughout all of the years proceeding the housing bubble bust, all of the talking heads went to extraordinary lengths to convince the America people this could and would last forever:

No housing bubble trouble
Despite relentless growth in home prices and housing demand, economists still don't see a bubble.
February 19, 2003: 4:39 PM EST
By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money Staff Writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The American appetite for habitation grew even stronger -- impossible as that seems -- in January, the government said Wednesday, renewing concerns that the U.S. housing market is in a dangerous bubble, like stocks in the 1990s.

Don't bet on it, economists say.

New home construction starts rose in January to an annual pace of 1.85 million units, the fastest pace in 16 years, according to a Commerce Department report, confounding economists' expectations for a decline.

Though the number of construction permits issued for new housing -- a leading indicator for the market -- fell, all of that weakness was in multi-family housing. Permits for single-family units, which make up about 80 percent of the housing construction market, rose 0.3 percent.

Last week, the National Association of Realtors said the median home price jumped 8.8 percent in the fourth quarter, the biggest gain in more than 20 years.

While the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said its index of builder optimism dipped a bit in early February, it still is at historically high levels, despite the kind of frigid weather in the eastern United States that ordinarily dampens construction activity.

"It would be tough to maintain the super-strong building pace recorded for the past several months," said NAHB President Kent Conine, a Dallas homebuilder. "But the market fundamentals remain solid, and the current level of builder optimism regarding the single-family segment reflects that."

Low mortgage rates fuel a boom

The biggest "market fundamental" in housing is mortgage rates at or near record lows. For several months, low rates have encouraged more home-buying, driving up demand for homes and pushing prices ever higher.

The housing market has, in fact, been one of the lone bright spots of an otherwise dreary economy. Higher home values have made homeowners feel wealthier, encouraging consumer spending, which makes up more than two-thirds of the total U.S. economy.

Low rates also have encouraged a frenzy of refinancing, which has allowed homeowners to lower their monthly payments and tap into their swelling home equity.

Meanwhile, corporate scandals and an agonizingly long bear market in stock prices have made home ownership even more attractive -- a house can't lie about quarterly earnings, and even if its value falls, at least you can live in it.

"As the equity market melted down, interest rates came down, and the housing sector has continued to thrive while the business sector has gone through hell -- and homes have to be filled up with goods, once they're bought," said Rory Robertson, interest rate strategist at Macquarie Equities USA.

Housing has been so relentlessly strong for so long that some observers occasionally fret that the market is artificially strong, that prices are due to suddenly collapse, crushing consumer confidence.

Bubble talk

But people have been wondering about a "housing bubble" since early 2001, and it hasn't popped yet.

For one thing, housing, like politics, is always local. There are some parts of the country -- Sacramento, we're looking at you -- where bubbles seem to have formed, with prices rising higher than the market apparently can support.

But on a national level, economists believe the supply of available housing is low enough to keep demand strong and keep prices from falling suddenly.

"1.85 million new homes being built per year in a population of 290 million and growing doesn't seem to be outrageous," Robertson said.

Economists warn that the housing market should slow down when interest rates start to rise, but that's not expected to happen for quite some time -- not until the situation in Iraq is cleared up, at the very earliest.

And the only thing that's going to bring interest rates up significantly in the short term is stronger economic activity, anyway, which will offset a good bit of the damage to the housing sector.

"If we're in a situation where rates are higher because the economy's great, the housing market is going to be last thing I'll be worried about," said Brown Brothers Harriman economist Lara Rhame, a former Fed economist.

For the most part, economists expect a gradual slowdown in the housing market through 2003 -- the National Association of Realtors, for example, thinks home-price growth will slow to 3.0 percent by the fourth quarter.

But one thing's for certain: the housing sector can't be the horse that pulls the world's biggest economy forever, especially if labor market weakness continues -- people have a hard time making mortgage payments when they don't have jobs.

"As the economy gets more and more dependent on housing being the key driver of growth, the economy becomes more and more vulnerable to that sector slowing down," Rhame said.

Yay!
And there's more, this time quoting Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan:

Media Myths: The Housing Bubble Is Bursting

Media claims about a “housing bubble” are nothing new. Since before the 9/11 terror attacks, the media have been calling the housing market a “bubble” while predicting an imminent, devastating decline. Not only have they been wrong in forecasting such a top, they have thoroughly mischaracterized what an investment bubble is. Now that the market for homes has finally slowed a bit, the media are declaring the bubble has burst.

A Bubble?: Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has denied the existence of a national housing bubble for several years, but the media have used the term repeatedly.

Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan even was asked about this subject during his July 17 testimony before Congress. “We’ve looked at the bubble question, and we’ve concluded that it is most unlikely, mainly because, one, we have a very diverse real estate market throughout the country,” Greenspan said.

Yay!

But then just when it was all starting to make sense,

In the wake of the subprime mortgage and credit crisis in 2007, Greenspan admitted that there was a bubble in the US housing market, warning in 2007 of "large double digit declines" in home values "larger than most people expect."^[28] However, Greenspan also noted, “I really didn't get it until very late in 2005 and 2006.”^[29]

Greenspan admitted that the housing bubble was “fundamentally engendered by the decline in real long-term interest rates”,^[30] though he also claims that long-term interest rates are beyond the control of central banks because "the market value of global long-term securities is approaching $100 trillion" and thus these and other asset markets are large enough that they "now swamp the resources of central banks."[31

So...
Naturally, the bubble burst and people started going into foreclosure in record numbers.

Mortgage delinquency, foreclosure rates soar

By Alan J. Heavens June 6, 2008 - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Mortgage delinquency and foreclosure rates soared nationally in the first quarter from the comparable 2007 period, with 89 percent of the increase coming in already hard-hit California, Florida and Nevada.

The Mortgage Bankers Association Delinquency Survey, which covers 45.2 million first-lien mortgages on one- to four-unit residential properties, showed that the delinquency rate rose to 6.35 percent of all loans in the 2008 quarter, from 4.84 percent of all loans in the first quarter of 2007.

What this means in numbers is that of the nation's 45.2 million mortgages, 287,172 were at least one payment behind. A year ago, when there were 43.9 million loans, the comparable number was 212,476 loans.

The 30-year delinquency rate is still below levels seen as recently as 2002, the association said.

The percent of mortgages in foreclosure nationally almost doubled, to 2.47 percent from 1.28 percent, while the number of foreclosures started in the quarter was 0.99 percent of those 45.2 million mortgages, compared with 0.58 percent in the 2007 first quarter.

The rates of both were the highest since 1979, the association reported.

"The magnitude of the national increases is clearly driven by certain loan types and certain states," said Jay Brinkmann, the association's vice president for research and economics.

The banks that made these shitty loans and the greedy de-regulated sons of bitches on Wall Street that backed them soon found themselves hit hard by the "Subprime Crisis":

Wall Street chaos: Lehman bankrupt, Bank of America buys Merrill

Washington - The embattled investment bank Lehman Brothers was expected to file for bankruptcy before

the start of trading later Monday, hours after financial services firm Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America.

Negotiations throughout the weekend failed to produce a buyer for the venerable Lehman Brothers, leading to the bankruptcy plans, the Washington Post reported early Monday on its website.

In a deal announced late Sunday, Merrill Lynch & Co, a stock brokerage and investment bank, agreed to be bought out by Bank of America Corp for 50 billion dollars in stock. The takeover comes as the Lehman's troubles dragged most other financial services stocks down, too.

The Lehman collapse follows more than a year of turmoil arising from the collapse of the US housing

bubble and a high rate of mortgage defaults, which undermined Wall Street's market for mortgage-backed securities.

The action was seen as a step to help calm financial markets heading into an uncertain start of trading on Monday morning in New York. Markets in Asia were already plummeting in early trading amid the worries from Wall Street.

Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve helped engineer the sale of another troubled investment banking firm, Bear Stearns. More recently, the federal government acted to take over the government- chartered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which undergird the US mortgage lending markets.

And now, although the entire crisis happened on Bush's watch and was fueled by his economic policies... John "The Reformer" McCain has come out swinging. In addressing the chaos on Wall Street, he "laid into Obama, accusing him of taking campaign cash and counsel from some of the big-business architects of the crisis.

“Senator Obama may be taking their advice and he may be taking their money, but in a McCain-Palin administration, there will be no seat for these people at the policy-making table,” McCain said of his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

“This is the problem with Washington, people like Senator Obama have been too busy gaming the system and haven’t ever done a thing to actually challenge the system,” he said i

n the battleground state of Wisconsin.

“Maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures, and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems."

Okay...

When Obama recovered from the stupor induced by that absolutely crazy ass statement, he responded: "“his big solution to this worldwide economic crisis was to blame me for it.”

“This is a guy who’s spent nearly three decades in Washington. After spending the entire campaign saying I haven’t been in Washington long enough, he apparently now is willing to assign me responsibility for all of Washington’s failings,” he said.

“I think it’s pretty clear that Senator McCain is a little panicked right now. At this point he seems to be willing to say anything, or do anything, or change any position, or violate any principle to try and win this election.”

The right wing has been blaming all of this the whole time on the greedy home buyers who

wanted more house than they deserved:

Subprime Borrowers: Not Innocents

Consumers who took out adjustable-rate home loans they now can’t repay are primarily to blame for the subprime mortgage crisis

by Eli Lehrer, Competitive Enterprise Institute

A simple look at the blunt reality reveals that borrowers themselves should assume primary responsibility for the current subprime crisis. Millions of borrowers, all over the country, knowingly signed mortgage

contracts they cannot now afford to honor.

Provided that lenders did not engage in force or fraud—and there’s no particular evidence they did so on a large scale—borrowers should do whatever they can to live up to the contracts they signed. The policies of lenders and government certainly helped the current crisis develop—but ultimately, do not absolve borrowers of responsibility for their debts.

And in most cases, the mortgage lenders not only are innocent of the predatory practices borrowers complain about but also are feeling the pain right along with them. These lenders do not revel in the current circumstances. A lender typically loses about a third of its loan value through foreclosure; thus, no lender (or mortgage-backed securities marketer) has an incentive to make or purchase a loan

it genuinely believes a borrower cannot pay.

With a very few exceptions, lenders have no desire to serve as landlords or take away people’s homes: A foreclosure causes almost as many problems for the lender as it does for the borrower. True predatory

lenders, who engage in fraud or make loans they know borrowers cannot pay, inevitably end up in either jails or unemployment lines.

The government played some role in the crisis as well. Its tax system encouraged Americans to take out very large mortgages to get out of paying federal income tax. And the government’s 2005 bankruptcy reforms meant that rather than having their debts wiped clean, most middle-class Americans who file for bankruptcy have to set up five-year payment plans with creditors.

Not one of these factors, of course, mitigates the facts of the situation. Mortgage borrowers who signed legally binding contracts should have to honor those contracts, or at minimum, renegotiate terms with their lenders. Any suggestion that borrowers should avoid responsibility would undermine the fundamental principles of contract law that lie at the base of any modern capitalist economy.

Had they been responsible, after being approved for the loans, the greedy homeowners would have doubled back and re-reviewed all of their financials, gone over their application again with a fine tooth comb and then made a responsible decision as to whether or not they deserved this loan. Accordingly therefore, Bush's solution to the whole fiasco is to pump $700 billion into bailing out the financial institutions and banks. He will give them almost a trillion dollars to preserve profits and operations and guarantee all those shitty loans they should have never made in the first place while leaving the irresponsible and greedy scheming home buyers to fend for themselves and pay those same companies their tax dollars are bailing out.

With economy on the brink, White House launches campaign to quickly sell $700B bailout plan

President Bush acknowledged that the program will put a "significant amount of taxpayers' money on

the line," but said that not acting would be riskier.

Associated Press

The Bush proposal that would dole out huge sums of money to Wall Street firms and bankers is a mere three pages in length and fails to specify which institutions would qualify or say what — if anything — taxpayers would get in return.

"It's a rather brief bill with a lot of money," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Comm

ittee chairman. "We understand the importance of the anticipation in the markets, but we also know that what we're doing is going to have consequences for decades to come. There's not a second act to this — we've got to get this right."

And the same people who can't understand why the liberals just can't let the market work, well , they've put a freeze on selling at a loss to prevent people from taking their bleeping money and running.

Temporary ban on short-selling put into place

By THOMAS LEE, Star Tribune

September 19, 2008

In a dramatic move to protect the beleaguered financial services industry, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Friday that it is temporarily banning short sales of nearly 800 stocks, including Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, Ameriprise Financial Inc. and Piper Jaffray Companies.

Short-selling -- in which traders profit when a stock price goes down -- has long had a legitimate place in the stock market. But critics accuse short-sellers of hastening the recent failures of investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

"Unbridled short-selling is contributing to the recent, sudden price declines in the securities of financial institutions unrelated to true price valuations," according to an SEC statement. "Financial institutions are particularly vulnerable to the crisis of confidence and panic selling."

Financial firms have been particularly vulnerable, because they constantly need to replenish their pools of capital, experts say.

Widespread short-selling might push down a bank stock to the point where it can't raise money to stay afloat.

"The SEC wanted to put in some circuit breakers and give the industry some time and breathing space," said Felix Meschke, a professor of finance at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.

Unless it is extended, the SEC ban will run through Oct. 2.

This is far from over. The corporate media has the story ending at the bailout. There will be no connection made to the economic connections of the next years and this massive p umping of taxpayer money into private industry. There is no question of where this money is coming from while we are in a recession and battling massive deficits. And actually, none of that really matters. As long as we can eat cake...

SARAH PALIN'S SPEECH AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

...was watched by 40 million plus people. Nevermind that 39 million of them were watching to see how in the bleeping hell they were going to play off the Baby Mama Drama of her 17 year old daughter being pregnant (allegedly), (see earlier post). Never mind that. Because, according to the right wing spin machine, tying Obama's numbers clearly proves Obama is finished. And that Sarah Palin's speech (while snitty, sarcastic, snide and void of any substance) endeared her to the American public in such a way that she should have been the presidential nominee.

Ok, If you say so.

My prediction? Oh, they will win. Not on merit or because they have a good platform or honestly or legally even but because America really doesn't want change. The fact that people are calling her speech a "hit" and saying "she hit one out of the park" and she "delivered" proves that. The other big winner of the night, if not the whole Republican convention was Rudy Guiliani , whose claim to heroism is he came to work on 9/11.








And the nicely cleaned up Levi "You Are the Father!" Johnston who held hands with his baby mama Bristol, the whole entire night.


(Baby bump or postpartum fatness enhanced with padding? I report, you decide...

Oh, and while we're on the topic, how strange is it that this 17 year old young woman is bigger at five months during her first pregnancy then her 44 year old mother was at seven months with her fifth? )




And Cindy McCain, who got her meds and then some.


And of course, you the American voter...

Sarah Palin is a Hot Ghetto Mess

Of the day!

I couldn't help that. The dude who writes one of my favorite sites, (the name of which I won't disclose because you'll go there and it'll be a day when he's talking about some real crazy shit or breaking on his fat wife and you'll be like "That's one of her favorite sites? She's a depraved fucken bitch..." about me behind my back. And I hate people talking about me behind my back.) always says blank blank blank Of the Day for everything and I find that absolutely hilarious and even though he doesn't seem like the kind of uptight asshole that would sue, you never know, so I can't use Of the Day even though Sara Palin is a Hot Ghetto Mess of the Day. Why? Because, to diffuse an even bigger scandal, she just announced that her unmarried seventeen year old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant. Kinda like the Jerry Springer episodes where the man screams "I can't be gay, I'm sleeping with your mother!" and the audience gasps...

BACKGROUND:
Obama's convention was a rousing success. Michelle Obama gave a killer speech that made me stand up and clap when I saw it played back on Cspan at like five in the morning. Dead serious, it was that good. The next night, Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton made it rain on 'em and then Barrack accepted the nomination, looking like a million bucks on the last night. He gave his speech in front of 84,000 people and it was watched by another 38 MILLION people at home. The right wing was hating, of course but- there was pretty much NOTHING else they could do .

Then, McCain announced his VP. A young, pretty woman governor from Alaska. Everyone was like what a stroke of genius, he did the totally unexpected and made a play for the Angry White Women who want to make history but not in the form of electing a Black man. The right wing broke their wrists patting themselves on the back for like 12 whole hours. Then, oh my God, it's like a dam broke. She's facing an ethics investigation for pressuring somebody (who snitched) to fire her sister's ex, which is bad but not that bad. She also has some "I voted for the Bridge to Nowhere before I voted against the Bridge to Nowhere" kinda John Kerry junk which is neither here nor there. But...it's the stuff with her kids that is really curiouser and curiouser.

Sarah Palin waited until she was seven months pregnant to announce that she was expecting her fifth child. The baby had been diagnosed in utero as having Down's Syndrome. The news came as a shock to everyone - several staffers commented that she didn’t seem pregnant.

Palin said she’s already about seven months along, with the baby due to arrive in mid-May.

That the pregnancy is so advanced astonished all who heard the news. The governor, a runner who’s always been trim, simply doesn’t look pregnant.

Even close members of her staff said they only learned this week their boss was expecting.

“I thought it was becoming obvious,” Palin said. “You know, clothes getting snugger and snugger.”

But people just couldn’t believe the news.

“Really? No!” said Bethel state Rep. Mary Nelson, who is close to giving birth herself.

“It’s wonderful. She’s very well-disguised,” said Senate President Lyda Green, a mother of three who has sometimes sparred with Palin politically. “When I was five months pregnant, there was absolutely no question that I was with child.”

…

This was still the case a few months later when she was interviewed in March: We also talked about the challenges of running a government while also raising a large and young family. At the time, I didn't know that Palin, clad in a loose, dark dress, was seven months pregnant with her fifth child. An aide called me the next day to tell me that Palin would be announcing the pregnancy at home in Alaska and that she had wanted me to know as a courtesy. She was sorry she hadn't mentioned it the night before.

And in a video that compares and contrasts her latest pregnancy to a previous one, the difference is dramatic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZHI4aHW0wU

(Also, in all of the pictures where she does look pregnant, her belly is the same size. She did not get any bigger from when she first started showing till she delivered.)

A month later, as she prepared to give a speech on energy policy at the Republican Governor’s Convention in Texas, her water broke. Palin stayed at the conference and delivered a 30-minute speech, then boarded a 12-hour Alaska Airlines flight from Dallas to Anchorage, neglecting to tell the airline her water had broken. It wasn't apparent to them that she was even in labor either:
"The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress," Boren said.

So, instead of seeking medical attention, she gave her speech, got on a plane to Alaska, had a layover in Seattle, and then instead of giving birth at the nearest hospital to the airport, she drove 45 minutes to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center. And even then, there's another oddity that arises. There's no listing of her as having delivered her baby there that night, which seems downright odd. The governor gives birth at the hospital and there's no announcement? Then, she returns to work three days after giving birth to this special needs baby.

During the pregnancy, Palin’s oldest daughter Bristol was pulled out of school for 5-8 months because "she had mono". I know nothing about this disease except that I wouldn't want to catch it but, according to what I've read on the internet, bouts of it are usually not that long. After her mom was chosen the VP pick, Bristol was photographed with the family at some event. And this is where it gets creepy. Here she is holding her "brother":

Here is her mom, holding her "brother":

For me, the body language alone is suspicious enough. Look at the pic below where she is holding him under his arm. I would trust myself to hold the baby like that but not one of the other kids.

This burned up the airwaves or whatever the internet works on for the whooooole weekend because of a DailyKOs story calling Sarah Palin out. The right wing countered with why does this matter, this is so unfair, why are they attacking her child and etc. The state started scrubbing photos from the website, links stopped working, pages were moved and etc. Some people were calling for the MSM to investigate while others were like no, they'll do some Rathergate shit and make her a "liberal" media martyr to rally the base.

The next day, Monday, was the start of the Republican convention and since the story had been on Drudgereport, they couldn't act like they hadn't heard it. So, they issued a rebuttal: Bristol Palin can not be 4month old Trig's mother because she is currently 5months pregnant!

The left wing immediately shit on themselves and ran for the hills. The DailyKos took the blog post down and started issuing apologies. It has since been decided that all of the questions that existed before about Sarah Palin's curious pregnancy are silly and a total of three pictures from the same event have been released which prove without a doubt that she was in fact pregnant.


So there...

Now it all makes sense...

No, it doesn't!

What do I think? There will never be any conclusive proof of when and if Bristol has the baby she is allegedly pregnant with. She will go into seclusion because of the stress of all this and a statement will be released at some point saying she had the baby at home and asking that her right to privacy be respected. The MSM will gladly comply.