American Republic Online

This piece at HotAir is the most comprehensive I’ve seen. I would have nixed the Abortion stuff myself, but rest is quite good as it lays out the real Obama in areas of Taxes, Associations/background, Foreign Policy, Middle America, Race & Experience.

Most people don’t honestly know what “change” means… here’s your answer.

What follows is by no means comprehensive, but it does shed some much-needed light on a number of Obama’s positions, statements, and associations about which he has been less than honest. We’ve attempted to boil each issue down to a succinct explanation with an accompanying, brief video clip—often starring Barack Obama in his own words. Before pulling the lever for someone who hopes voters will ignore his paper-thin resume, unsavory associations, and hard-left voting record, each citizen has a duty to do his due diligence.

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Journalism.org tries its best to spin this as “its not as bad as it sounds”, but the numbers don’t lie:

Obama would probably claim that most of his negatives are coming from Fox: “I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls”

Which begs the question of where both of the candidates would be without ABC, CBS, MSNBC, & CNN??? Read the rest of this entry »

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher has shot onto the national scene and captured (threatened?) an election with a simple question.  Before you believe all the hype in the chopped up videos from both sides you should check out the full video for yourself (it should be around 5 minutes).

Two significant issues have emerged from the now famous meeting with Joe.  First -most importantly- is how it highlights Obama’s tax plan.  Second, is the aftermath reaction to the now famous socialist slip.

OBAMA: …If your revenue is above 250…

The majority of people are missing the fact that Obama is talking about small business REVENUE not profit. Total sales before you pay your employees, rent, materials cost, etc… NOT the cash going into your pocket as the owner after you’ve paid all your bills.  I keep hearing people talk about $250k paychecks of these owners when that’s not what he’s talking about at all.  Just looking at the payroll expenses of a mom and pop whatever with more than 5-8 employees and you quickly exceed 250k. Read the rest of this entry »

Frantic Day on Wall Street as Banks Teeter:

Coming just a week after the government took control of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the magnitude of the industry’s reshaping is staggering: two of the most powerful firms on Wall Street, Merrill Lynch and Lehman, will disappear.

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Here’s an interesting map from Amazon.  It shows a “state’s percentage of ‘red’ and ‘blue’ book sales over the past 60 days“.  It’s mostly red.

Wait!  Conservatives read books?!  And use an internet bookstore?!  My world just got flipped upside down.

(”Interestingly,” the bluest area is DC.  Go figure.)

I guess I was too long on my prediction.  Instead of “Fannie and Freddie will be nationalized before next summer, probably even the end of this year,” I should have said “Fannie and Freddie will be nationalized before next week!

Well, it’s good news for those of us looking to buy a home on the cheap in the coming months.

If any of you took the time to read my post on the FDIC, here’s a follow up.  A case study:

National City (NCC) is the bank Elizabeth and I used when we lived in IL, and it is trading around $5 now, down from about $40 last April. 

Now, part of the wonders of our modern capital economy is that financial companies borrow money (either through depositors or by issuing bonds, etc) and then lend it out at a higher rate – the essence of banking, right?  Well, how long do you think a bank can stay in business borrowing money at a 7% rate, and loaning it out at 14%?  A pretty long time right?  Well, what if they are borrowing at 14% and then lending it out at 7%?  That’s the rate that investors are demanding for National City’s debt: 14%.  

Consider this: last quarter NCC lost about $1.76 billion (almost $20 million a day).  Even though they raised about $7 billion in April with an equity issuance, they basically used it to pay down their debt. 

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This is cause for some concern:
FDIC Weighs Tapping Treasury as Funds Run Low

The FDIC has about $50 billion in reserves.  They will need billions just for Indy Mac.

Rest assured that more bank failures are on the way. True, they will mostly be smaller, local banks, but they will add up and put further strain on the FDIC.  Financial institutions have so far written down about $500 billion.  But that’s just bad mortgage debt.  That’s not the only bad debt out there.  In addition, as banks seek to regain their capitalization rates, lending will dry up.  And as pointed out before, the past few years have mostly been a product of mortgage equity withdrawals.  Without that, we would have seen negative GDP for 2 years.  I’m not trying to be doom and gloom, but we are not out of the financial woods yet.  We’ll work through it, but it’s not over yet.

For instance, Washington Mutual’s debt now trades at 20%, which is worse than junk bonds.  Regions, Wachovia, CitiGroup, GMAC, etc etc are all struggling.

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That’s right, we even beat President Palmer himself to his connection with Obama and history.  What we wrote on April 19th is now being confirmed by 24 star Dennis Haysbert.  Heroes beget followers and copycats.  And sometimes other heroes.  We’ll let you decide which category Obama belongs.

• Former ‘24? President Credits His Role for Obama Rise