Fed Begs for Secrecy on Failed Bank Bail Out – Atlas Shrugs

These guys have a great take on this whole situation.  The government beg to keep secret what we are spending money on, yet are instantly happy to release any national secrets which help defend our country.

So, these banks, that are in such poor shape that they have to sell themselves to the federal government for bailout money, are worried that people will know what they did?  What’s next?  Maybe the Treasury should ask for that too.

This was all caused by the bank legislation that the liberals passed under Clinton, forcing banks to take home loans from people who couldn’t pay those loans, so that "everyone could have a house". Idiots.

Now it seems the FEDS don’t want you to know.

Fed urges secrecy on banks in bailout programs

* Fed urges judge not to enforce order pending appeal

* Banks say disclosure could cause loss of confidence

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Aug 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve asked a federal judge not to enforce her order that it reveal the names of the banks that have participated in its emergency lending programs and the sums they received, saying such disclosure would threaten the companies and the economy.

The central bank filed its request on Wednesday, two days after Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in favor of Bloomberg News, which had sought information under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Preska said the Fed failed to show that revealing the names would stigmatize the banks and result in "imminent competitive harm." The Fed asked the judge not to require disclosure while it readies an appeal.

"Immediate release of these documents will cause irreparable harm to these institutions and to the board’s ability to effectively manage the current, and any future, financial crisis," the central bank argued.

It added that the public interest favors a delay, citing a potential for "significant harms that could befall not only private companies, but the economy as a whole" if the information were disclosed.

The Clearing House Association LLC, which represents banks, in a separate filing supported the Fed’s call for a delay. It said speculation that banks’ liquidity is drying up could cause runs on deposits, and trading partners to demand collateral.

"Survival can depend on the ephemeral nature of public confidence," Clearing House general counsel Norman Nelson wrote. "Experience in the banking industry has shown that when customers and market participants hear negative rumors about a bank, negative consequences inevitably flow."

In other words, con the people and lull them into a false sense of confidence while you pull the rug out from under them and rob them blind.

Fed Begs for Secrecy on Failed Bank Bail Out – Atlas Shrugs

The Jawa Report: WaPo Vindicates Cheney

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Ha.  I can imagine the gnashing of teeth that went into them typing this article up.  To have to admit that anything that Darth Cheney said was… right?  The agony!

Oh, what a bitter pill this article must have been [emphasis added]:

After enduring the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency’s secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials." …

…These scenes provide previously unpublicized details about the transformation of the man known to U.S. officials as KSM from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its "preeminent source" on al-Qaeda. This reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques.

The Jawa Report: WaPo Vindicates Cheney

Marcos Breton: Little guy gets stuck with homeless camp in Sacramento – Sacramento News

This is horrible.  This is exactly what you get with liberals.  The law is there to do their bidding and will be ignored if inconvenient.

Near the corner of 13th and C streets lives a 71-year-old man without the money or political influence to uphold his rights – or the law.

A retired auto mechanic who lives on a fixed income with his wife, Pedro Hernandez is collateral damage in a struggle between homeless advocates and the city of Sacramento.

He can do nothing about it, so homeless people have set up 35 tents and are camping out right behind the Victorian where Hernandez has lived for 38 years, the home where he raised six kids.

It’s against the law to camp in the city of Sacramento, and yet homeless people have been camping on the property since late last week. That’s the way it is here.

The homeless would never be allowed to camp in the Fabulous 40s, Land Park, east Sacramento or any other Sacramento neighborhood where residents have a voice. So the injustice of homelessness is remedied with another injustice: forcing a homeless camp on a person of modest means who can do nothing about it.

And this issue gets even more complicated.

The homeless people living behind Hernandez are doing so with the permission of Mark Merin, who controls the property and is one of the most formidable lawyers in Sacramento.

Merin has been helping homeless advocates in their push to secure a legal campsite for the homeless – a "safe ground" – by winter.

Interestingly enough, Merin also sued Hernandez in 2007 in a property line dispute.

When I asked Hernandez about that suit, he started to cry, but declined to say anything about it for fear of being sued by Merin again.

A big giver to homeless charities, Merin has built a career representing the disenfranchised. He is a Goliath who usually represents Davids.

"Mr. Merin is a civil rights attorney, but what about our rights?" asked Patricia Hernandez, Pedro’s oldest daughter. "He has trampled all over our rights."

Merin said he has no "animus" toward Hernandez. He called it a coincidence that he had filed the prior suit against Hernandez and now has sited a homeless camp behind his home.

Marcos Breton: Little guy gets stuck with homeless camp in Sacramento – Sacramento News – Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Jihad Watch: Wilders: 80-year-old Muslim who married 10-year-old "is behaving like a pig, just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six year old girl Aisha"

Now here is a politician who has guts!  And as Jihad Watch points out, it puts the dhimmis and Muslims in an interesting position.  Do you admit that Mohammed was a pedophile?  Do you admit that Muslims follow this?

"Wilders Compares Prophet Mohammed to Pig," from NIS News, August 28 (thanks to Ebonystone):

THE HAGUE, 28/08/09 – Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders has seized on a news report from Saudi Arabia for peppery written questions to the cabinet. In these, he compares the Islamic prophet Mohammed to a pig.

Wilders has requested clarification from Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen on a marriage in Saudi Arabia between an 80 year old man and a 10 year old child. The child had run away from her elderly husband, but was brought back to him by her father, the English-language website Arab News reports based on a Saudi newspaper.

Wilders asks the minister if he shares the view that "this man is behaving like a pig, just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six year old girl Aisha." The PVV leader wants Verhagen to summon the Saudi Arabian ambassador to express his repugnance.

Jihad Watch: Wilders: 80-year-old Muslim who married 10-year-old "is behaving like a pig, just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six year old girl Aisha"

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Did the UK renege on Lockerbie promise to US?

Now, the UK has turned on the US. 

Read this article.  In a nutshell, the UK handed over someone who killed 270 people, mostly Americans for oil contracts.

Would this have happened under any other president?  Would Bush have sat by and watched this happen without taking any actions against it or the nations that facilitated it?  I doubt it.

The government of Gordon Brown in the UK insisted it had nothing to do with the “compassionate release” of terrorist Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber who killed 270 people, the majority of them Americans.  The Times of London has correspondence which appears to dispute that, and shows that the UK reneged on a promise to the US to keep Megrahi behind bars for his entire sentence

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Did the UK renege on Lockerbie promise to US?

Obama 2006: Combining Private and Public Health Insurance ‘Worst of Both Worlds’ | NewsBusters.org

Isn’t it amazing that pretty much anything Obama has said, you can find a video of him saying the opposite on the web?

Please click through to NewBuster’s article.  They have the videos and a lot more info there.

On a side note:  Best line I have seen for ObamaCare…   ObamaCare, bend over and cough.  Hilarious!

As Barack Obama and his media minions try to force healthcare reform down the throats of the American people, the President has repeatedly said that a public option would increase competition for private insurance companies and thereby drive down prices.

This apparently wasn’t his view in 2006 when he said the expansion of medicare to include prescription drug coverage for seniors was "the worst of both worlds: we’ve got the price gouging of the private sector and the bureaucracy of the public sector."

Obama 2006: Combining Private and Public Health Insurance ‘Worst of Both Worlds’ | NewsBusters.org

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Enzi: Democrats will spend more, deliver less in ObamaCare

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To me, this this seems like the pinnacle of naiveté to believe that the Dems even had a goal of trying to improve health care.  This has NOTHING to do with health care.  It has everything to do with power and control.

Trying to work with the Dems on this one is stupid.  There is no part of this bill that should be passed.  They have taken tort reform off the table, with Dean admitting it was because they were afraid to.  They want a $10 billion payoff to the unions.  They want to direct access to all your financial records.  And the list goes on and on…

If we want to “fix” health care, lets go a step at a time and start with tort reform.  When that one is in place and working, then we can look, carefully, at other things, but more than anything, we need to lower government restriction and let the free market work.  We need to get the system to stop covering illegal immigrants.

Glad you finally figured it out, Mike.

Mike Enzi (R-WY) has taken plenty of heat from his conservative constituents for attempting to hammer out a bipartisan health-care reform bill in the Senate.  However, Enzi appears frustrated not with Wyoming voters but with the Democrats on the other side of the table.  With just a few days left before Congress resumes work, Enzi blasted the Democrats for spending too much money and limiting patient choice, when what America needs is the exact opposite:

A leading GOP negotiator on health care struck a further blow to fading chances of a bipartisan compromise by saying Democratic proposals would restrict medical choices and make the country’s “finances sicker without saving you money.”

The criticism from Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., echoed that of many opponents of the Democratic plans under consideration in Congress. But Enzi’s judgment was especially noteworthy because he is one of only three Republicans who have been willing to consider a bipartisan bill in the Senate.

In the Republicans’ weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, Enzi said any health care legislation must lower medical costs for Americans without increasing deficits and the national debt.

“The bills introduced by congressional Democrats fail to meet these standards,” he said.

Enzi called for a reform effort that pushes for increased competition, especially across state lines, and for tort reform.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Enzi: Democrats will spend more, deliver less in ObamaCare

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Liberal Fallout Zones

This is a long post and it should be required reading.  I am not going to take it and paraphrase it.  Just go read it and learn what Liberalism really does to a neighborhood.

In Northeast Washington, DC off Minnesota Avenue a neighborhood sits tucked between the entrance ramps to 295 North and South. The four story buildings line a one way street that loops around in a circle. Residents of these buildings call the complex “Paradise.” But in reality, this area is another liberal fallout zone. Instead of Nuclear disaster areas like Chernobyl in Russia, liberals in America have created desolate areas where the harm from their bombs (social programs) manifests itself as crime, hopelessness and generational poverty.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Liberal Fallout Zones

Why do unions love ObamaCare? Here are 10,000,000,000 reasons.

Gee.  I wonder why the unions are trying to fill up all the town hall meetings with their goons.  $10,000,000,000 is quite a motivator.

Earlier in the week, we found out that unions have good reasons to conduct an Astroturf campaign on behalf of ObamaCare — in fact, ten billion good reasons.  The Detroit Free Press reported that HR3200 gives a $10,000,000,000 subsidy to union pension and benefit plans, a key component that had gone largely unremarked.  Later in the week, the Detroit News’ editorial board blasted the payoff and demanded its removal:

One reason the public so distrusts the health care plan being considered by Congress is that so many troublesome details keep bubbling out of the massive legislation.

The latest example is the $10 billion taxpayers will be asked to shell out to prop up the United Auto Workers’ retiree health insurance program. …

In effect, it would ask every taxpayer, regardless of whether they’ll have health insurance coverage themselves after they retire — and most won’t — to chip in to maintain the UAW’s coverage, which even after the union’s givebacks is still better than what the average American worker receives.

That’s one important point to remember.  Union health plans will be exempt from the limitations of ObamaCare, allowing unions to operate as insurers while forcing everyone else into government-approved plans in “exchanges”.  Instead of having the union pay for their own plans, taxpayers will subsidize them, while getting less themselves.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Union payoff should get stripped from ObamaCare: Detroit News

Times Watch Quotes of Note — "Almost Entirely White and Irritable Crowd" of "Angry" Obama-Care Protesters

I just found a new website to add to my RSS reader.  I love it.

This is just one of a list of ridiculous biased statements from the NY Times.  Read them all.

hat tip to NewsBusters for running an article on this one.

Pro-Obama-Care "Grassroots Advocates" Actually Controlled by DNC

"Under the aegis of the Democratic National Committee, various labor unions and grassroots advocates plan more than 1,800 events, including petition drives, phone-a-thons and rallies over the next two weeks." — Reporter Katharine Seelye on the "Prescriptions" blog at nytimes.com, August 26.

Times Watch Quotes of Note — "Almost Entirely White and Irritable Crowd" of "Angry" Obama-Care Protesters