9 Minutes Of Pure Fascination

Wachovia Posts $23.9B Loss...Now Looking Ready To Make Cars

I thought losses like that were reserved for US auto manufacturers.

Although my analogy works better the other way around. GM is looking for a bailout as well.

A top General Motors executive said Thursday that automakers were “deserving” of as much as $50 billion in government-backed loans so that they can build more fuel-efficient cars.

And since that went so well, GM went hunting for cash the old fashioned way. Begging.

Cash hungry GM may go to Congress for some extra needed cash to move towards a possible acquisition of Chrysler LLC. According to a person familiar with the financial side of the deal, said that GM is looking to go as the government to help it purchase Chrysler although he is not sure if the General had approached the government as of yet.

And finally, we can't forget about threatening from a position of weakness. GM has said it will dump all of it's retirees on the US taxpayer, should it run out of cash.

The Tentacles Of ACORN

ACORN is mad and they are fighting back. In fact they are down right pissed that anyone has noticed the fraudulent voting and they are not going to take this without lying about the whole thing.

"We appreciate Senator McCain's effort to stir up the Republican base by attacking a community organization working to increase public participation in our democratic process. However, these attacks reflect an increasingly panicked candidate."

Here's a the state by state graphic.



But ACORN is much more than a vote-fruad organization. Herehttp://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12357 are the statements from their "campaigns." Seems like every one of their campaigns ends up with ACORN getting a lot of public funding.

In Chicago, ACORN fought to get certified teachers in every classroom. In order to curb youth related crime, our members organized an anti-violence rally in which more than 100 members participated. As a result, city officials awarded $12 million to ACORN to put toward new after-school and weekend programs.

ACORN has facilitated statewide education reform in Illinois, working with a coalition of community organizations, to create the Grow Your Own Teacher program. The program recruits teacher candidates from among paraprofessionals and active parents in hard-to-staff schools, and involves 587 teacher candidates, more than 50 percent of whom are African American and 25 percent Latino. GYOT ACORN has been approved for a third year of funding by the state legislature at $3 million.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has established a housing fund with an initial deposit of $2 million to which additional monies will be generated through bonds and resource campaigns.

ACORN doesn't stop there. They are helping to negotiate blackmail utilities into sub market rates for energy.

In Delaware, ACORN pushed off-shore wind farm Blue Water to agree to set the price of wind power, distributed through Delmarva Power, at an affordable rate of $6.76-$8.92 for 25 years. ACORN has been concerned that expensive wind power could add $11.71-$55 per month to energy bills.

ACORN Fair Housing is a federally funded program through the Office of Housing and Urban Development’s(HUD) Fair Housing Initiatives Program ( FHIP) grant. It is our mission to prevent and eliminate discriminatory housing practices. ACORN Fair Housing Organization works to ensure equal housing opportunity by providing a variety of services through outreach, education and enforcement.

Not only that. ACORN proudly boasts about their role in getting the housing crash started. What they don't mention is the lawsuit they filed with Obama to force lenders to give money to people without a reasonable expectation of getting repaid.

No other organization has fought harder to increase access to credit for low-income and minority families than ACORN, but predatory lending is threatening to reverse the progress we have made. Beginning in the 1980s, ACORN fought against redlining and discrimination and for greater community investment. ACORN Housing was founded to provide free education and counseling to help low-income people become homeowners.

The Real Goal Of Environmentalism - De-Industrialization

It doesn't take a PhD from an Ivy League school to get that the main idea of the political arm of environmental movement is to reduce the standard of living of western nations. Kyoto was only aimed at the first worlders in the west. Carbon taxes are going to diminish the manufacturing sectors of the EU and the US while making us work harder just to get the basics.

Then there is this report from the EU Parliament meeting on energy and environment policy.

Power generation, construction, coal and aluminum are the biggest losers after a day of votes by the European Parliament's environment committee yesterday. The winners on "Super Tuesday", as it was dubbed, will be investors in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and Russia.

The committee was staking out a position on the next phase of the EU's carbon emissions trading scheme, which began in 2003. ETS involves sucking some €30bn out of industry by mandating that manufacturing and power generators must bid for permits. Most permits are now free, but the committee voted to force power plants into full auctioning from 2013. The goal is to enforce full auctioning across all parts of the economy (or what's left of it) by 2020. The committee's votes inform the EU's negotiating position in global climate negotiations.

So much for energy independence since Poland generates most of its power from home-mined coal, but will be dependent on Russian gas in the next decade.

The money quote is:

"Europe will export jobs and import energy-intensive products, with no environmental gain," said Patrick de Schrynmakers, secretary general of the European Aluminium Association (EAA). The EU will be able to fine member states which fail to meet their national targets, at the rate of €100 for every extra tonne of CO2 emitted.

If this was a straight up and down desire to help the environment, there would be a scientific list of what we should do to make the most difference for our envirnment. Instead, we see every effort loaded with political goals that have nothing to do with potential climate change.

Piggy-backing unpalatable ideas onto a concern that nobody could reasonably argue with has been done many times. Examples include the War on Poverty and the massive expansion of federal money in education. As in previous cases, the anti-capitalists will do little for the environment while they implement their plan for de-industrialization.

Vast 'City of the Dead' Found Underneath Rome And Somewhere Near Orlando...ACORN Looks At A Treasure Trove Of New Voters

Workers renovating a rugby stadium have uncovered a vast complex of tombs beneath Rome that mimic the houses, blocks and streets of a real city, officials said Thursday as they unveiled a series of new finds here.

Culture Ministry officials said that medieval pottery shards in the city of the dead, or necropolis, show the area may have been inhabited by the living during the Dark Ages after being used for centuries for burials during the Roman period.

It is not yet clear who was buried in the ancient cemetery, but archaeologists at the still partially excavated site believe at least some of the dead were freed slaves of Greek origin.

Writings at the site led experts to identify the tomb as belonging to Marcus Nonius Macrinus, one of the closest aides and generals of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius during his campaigns against Germanic tribes in Northern Europe. And more importantly, the inspiration for Russell Crow's Gladiator character.

Meanwhile funeral directors are having their conference in Orlando this week. And baby they are rubbing their pallid hands together.

Funeral Industry Prepares for Potential Historic Windfall: Death of the Baby Boomers. Experts say the mortality rate is the greatest single predictor of the industry's business, estimated at about $11 billion annually at funeral homes alone. So bottom lines are likely to bulge.

"It sounds kind of morbid, but they are looking at boom times," said Tara Olson, the owner of AllPoints Research, a marketing research firm that has worked with funeral homes to develop business plans. "They're just sort of waiting for the baby boomers to start dying off."

So how do you livin' up a funeral convention?

For now, funeral directors milled the floors of the convention center here, in a surreal world where people in Snow White and Tinkerbell costumes hand out flyers for a funeral webcasting company and a marching band performs near a display of tiny caskets for children.

Chocolates come in the shape of coffins, boxer shorts have jokes about cremation, and giveaway calendars devote months to products such as JaundiBalm ("Toughest against jaundice!")

Excitement builds.

Some convention-goers tested out a device used to lift corpses by being lowered into a coffin, then back unto a table. "Best thing ever invented," one exclaimed.

And they are feeling good.

Obama Explains Marxism To The Plumber And The Plumber Says You Are Full Of Shit

Heh, if you didn't make as much as you do it (my tax plan) would be better for you. That is, if you could time travel and make what you did 10 years ago, this tax plan would be good for you...as long as you were not as successful. Joe's grin says, "I wouldn't buy gas from this asshole."



The plumber isn't buying it.



Wow. Obama is the biggest bullshit artist I have ever seen. If socialism and communism worked like he thinks it does, France would have the biggest fucking economy in the world.

Waitin' For The End Of The World

ACORN In Philly

There is no bottom to this story.

ACORN And Google Earth

The Google Earth product has an embedded layer that shows "places of interest." Usually they are the usual tourist spots, but leave it to our friends at Google to turn even this into a political statement. A places of interest flag near New Orleans looks like this:



The little flag reads, "Every Human Has Right."

When selected, the unsuspecting google user get hit with the following Marxist rhetoric.

Freedom from Want
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.” Article 22 guarantees the right to social security. Article 23 affirms the right to work, as well as to “equal pay for equal work” and “just and favourable remuneration.
Sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Stephen Bradberry
Living Wage Advocate and Director of New Orleans ACORN — United States
Stephen Bradberry is the head organizer of Louisiana ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN has been active in communities of color for more than 30 years. Bradberry has served in low and moderate-income neighborhoods in Louisiana for more than a decade. His chapter of the national community group, ACORN, has more than 10,000 member families and works specifically in the area of Living Wages, Environmental Justice and Voting rights.

At ACORN, Bradberry has worked extensively on issues of environmental and financial justice. He directs a staff of community organizers who go door to door throughout the state of Louisiana to mobilize residents to work for social change. Under his direction, the organization ran an 18 month campaign to turn the City of New Orleans planning process 180 degrees from turning the lower ninth ward into wetlands to being a pilot neighborhood for the rebuilding process.

Google has two other "Human Rights" special interest flags in North America. One for Lucas Benitez.

Labor Rights Activist for Farmers — Mexico
By educating and organizing fellow migrant farmworkers, Lucas Benitez helped secure the first wage increase for tomato pickers in 20 years, exposed and stopped two slavery rings, and launched a Labor Action Rights program that collected nearly $100,000 in back wages. He organized a successful boycott of the fast-food chain Taco Bell, called off in 2005 when the company agreed to address the wages and working conditions of farmworkers in the Florida tomato industry.

"Human rights are universal, and if we as farmworkers are to one day indeed enjoy equal rights, the same rights all other workers in this country are guaranteed, this agreement must only be a beginning," Benitez said when announcing the end of the boycott. "To make those rights truly universal, other leaders of the fast-food industry and the supermarket industry must join us on this path toward social responsibility."

The other is for Craig Kielburger in Toronto, who says "We've globalized technology; we've globalized commerce, we've globalized culture," says Kielburger. "We haven't globalized compassion; it's the one that's left."

There are no Human Rights flags in Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea. But there are two for Israel.

Welcome Back Drudge

Lake County Indiana

They decided to check out the ACORN registrations a little closer. 2,100 of the first 2,100 were total frauds.

Liberal Hatred On Display

Where is your concern John Lewis?

McCain Polls Follow the S&P 500

Source: State Of The Union

Matt Drudge Getting Ready For New Administration

Drudge has taken a noticable turn in his selection of the news. He has stopped reporting on ACORN and his Republican "raaaacism" and "hatred" headlines outnumber even the market crash.



Not that this isn't what the left is pushing these days, but the tone is definately not the usual Drudge. The grinning Tim Robbins seems to be something of a message to frequent readers.

Al Capone Was A Community Organizer: A Short List Of ACORN Voting Fraud That Begs For A RICO Act Prosecution

From a list compiled by Hillary supporters.

AR 1998
A contractor with ACORN-affiliated Project Vote was arrested for falsifying about 400voter registration cards.

CO 2004
An ACORN employee admitted to forging signatures and registering three of her friends to vote 40 times.
2005 Two ex-ACORN employees were convicted in Denver of perjury for submitting false voter registrations.

FL 2004
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman said ACORN was “singled out” among suspected voter registration groups for a 2004 wage initiative because it was “the common thread” in the agency’s fraud investigations.

MI 2004
The Detroit Free Press reported that “overzealous or unscrupulous campaign workers in several Michigan counties are under investigation for voter-registration fraud, suspected of attempting to register nonexistent people or forging applications for already-registered voters.” ACORN-affiliate Project Vote was one of two groups suspected of turning in the documents.

MO 2007
Four ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City for charges including identity theft and filing false registrations during the 2006 election.
2006 Eight ACORN employees in St. Louis were indicted on federal election fraud charges. Each of the eight faces up to five years in prison for forging signatures and submitting false information.
2003 Of 5,379 voter registration cards ACORN submitted in St. Louis, only 2,013 of those appeared to be valid. At least 1,000 are believed to be attempts to register voters illegally.

NC 2004
North Carolina officials investigated ACORN for submitting fake voter registration cards.

NM 2005
Four ACORN employees submitted as many as 3,000 potentially fraudulent signatures on the group’s Albuquerque ballot initiative. A local sheriff added: “It’s safe to say the forgery was widespread.”
2004 An ACORN employee registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. Citing this and other examples, New Mexico State Representative Joe Thompson stated that ACORN was “manufacturing voters” throughout New Mexico.

OH 2007
A man in Reynoldsburg was indicted on two felony counts of illegal voting and false registration, after being registered by ACORN to vote in two separate counties.
2004 A grand jury indicted a Columbus ACORN worker for submitting a false signature and false voter registration form. In Franklin County, two ACORN workers submitted what the director of the board of election supervisors called “blatantly false” forms. In Cuyahoga County, ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote submitted registration cards that had the highest rate of errors for any voter registration group.

MN 2004
During a traffic stop, police found more than 300 voter registration cards in the trunk of a former ACORN employee, who had violated a legal requirements that registration cards be submitted to the Secretary of State within 10 days of being filled out and signed.

PA 2008
An ACORN employee in West Reading, PA, was sentenced to up to 23 months in prison for identity theft and tampering with records. A second ACORN worker pleaded not guilty to the same charges and is free on $10,000 bail.

2004 Reading’s Director of Elections received calls from numerous individuals complaining that ACORN employees deliberately put inaccurate information on their voter registration forms. The Berks County director of elections said voter fraud was “absolutely out of hand,” and added: “Not only do we have unintentional duplication of voter registration but we have blatant duplicate voter registrations.” The Berks County deputy director of elections added that ACORN was under investigation by the Department of Justice.

TX 2004
ACORN turned in the voter registration form of David Young, who told reporters “The signature is not my signature. It’s not even close.” His social security number and date of birth were also incorrect.

VA 2005
In 2005, the Virginia State Board of Elections admonished Project Vote and ACORN for turning in a significant number of faulty voter registrations. An audit revealed that 83% of sampled registrations that were rejected for carrying false or questionable information were submitted by Project Vote. Many of these registrations carried social security numbers that exist for other people, listed non-existent or commercial addresses, or were for convicted felons in violation of state and federal election law.

In a letter to ACORN, the State Board of Elections reported that 56% of the voter registration applications ACORN turned in were ineligible. Further, a full 35% were not submitted in a timely manner, as required by law. The State Board of Elections also commented on what appeared to be evidence of intentional voter fraud. “Additionally,” they wrote, “information appears to have been altered on some applications where information given by the applicant in one color ink has been scratched through and re-entered in another color ink. Any alteration of a voter registration application is a Class 5 Felony in accordance with § 24.2-1009 of the Code of Virginia.”

WA 2007
Three ACORN employees pleaded guilty, and four more were charged, in the worst case of voter registration fraud in Washington state history. More than 2,000 fraudulent voter registration cards were submitted by the group during a voter registration drive.

WI 2004
The district attorney’s office investigated seven voter registration applications Project Vote employees filed in the names of people who said the group never contacted them. Former Project Vote employee Robert Marquise Blakely told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had not met with any of the people whose voter registration applications he signed, “an apparent violation of state law,” according to the paper.