Author: luimbe

Gran Torino III: Bill O’Reilly as Clint Eastwood as Walt Kowalski in “Turn that asian jibberish down!”

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Some choice assertions by Bill O’Reilly and his WAMOR (white angry male old republican) friend:

  • Watching Gangnam style = same as getting high.
  • Psy is not using any words. It’s just gibberish.
  • There is a lack of insight here. like anyone who uses facepage.net
  • Pyonyang. Seoul. Who cares.

why Gran Torino III? Silly person who probably likes this Gang ‘Nam noise sung by Cambodians at quinceaneras: the 2012 RNC was II.

Mel Gibson is doing a parallel series. Gran Torino: holocaust denier. They will intersect in World War on Christmas I, II and III. sequels to O’Reilly blockbuster movie

There are people that thought what Clint Eastwood did at the RNC was fantastic and then there were people who are white, angry at black president, 65 and up and Republican. Really agreeing with anything that Bill O’Reilly is saying here is the opposite of those noises you can only hear if you are a teenager.

Warren Rudman (b. 1930 – d. 2012)

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The Hart-Rudman report is still one of the most ignored but oddly prescient blue ribbon commission reports. It’s an I told you so for the 10 years after it was written.
In addition, he was a Republican that doesn’t exist anymore: a northeast social moderate.

Rudman served 12 years in the Senate, a deficit hawk with a reputation for honesty and blunt talk.

“I think those who really did get to know him – get past the gruff exterior everyone comments on – got to like him very much,” Hart said. “He had a very good sense of humor. He could laugh at himself, often did, and he was a generally remarkable human being.”

A pro-choice Republican who opposed school prayer and didn’t believe the Second Amendment created an absolute right for individuals to own guns, Rudman was to the left of his party on many social issues, especially later in life.

He was, however, a strict conservative on defense and fiscal matters, and fixated on the federal budget deficit, which he watched grow as President Ronald Reagan enacted tax cuts and a military buildup in the early 1980s.

Out of that swelling deficit came his major legislative achievement. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reform bill, signed into law in 1985, set mandatory deficit reduction targets and imposed automatic spending cuts if Congress didn’t meet them. The goal: a balanced budget by 1991.

 

A good faith “debt hawk” who would compromise and not harp on social issues. Those were the days.

One more time on Romney Campaign staffer credit cards

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Just hit me tonight (I don’t think it’s a novel thought) but still::

It’s crazy that Mitt Romney’s campaign was so inefficient they couldn’t manage GOTV, they couldn’t see through their own polling b.s. (so much so he was confident didn’t have a concession speech) but he was able to have some sort of contingency plan ready to cancel his staffers credit cards in case he lost they wouldn’t get one more red cent out of Mitt Romney.

Rubio wants more nuclear energy, doesn’t believe in radiocarbon dating

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No More Mister Nice Blog points out that Rubio will still be a rising star even though he is obviously a creationist.

Gawker quotes the GQ article where Rubio basically denies the validity of carbon dating:

Is Marco Rubio, Florida’s junior senator, a scientist? No, he tells GQ, twice, when asked how old the earth is:

I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. […] I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. […] I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.

Rubio on nuclear energy:

I support a comprehensive energy plan that encourages nuclear energy, exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and environmentally safe leasing of oil and natural gas fields in the outer continental shelf and on federally owned lands with oil shale in the West. As senator, I will stand for policies that make us more energy efficient, less reliant on foreign sources of oil, create jobs and ease the burden on family budgets.

source: Marco Rubio on Energy & Oil.

No one in the MSM will point out that putting your weight behind nuclear energy while denying any significant results from say radioactive dating is a scientifically irreconcilable position.

Only one can be trusted

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Adele Stan lists screeds from 10 Republicans who think their party’s dysfunctional at Salon. I only trust Megan McCain’s because while they all say they hate Karl Rove (except for Karl Rove), she is the only one who openly sets her political consulting price ($5/free):

I hate — hate — Karl Rove. I think he’s an idiot, a pretentious blowhard, and I think he was ruined a lot of things for the Republican Party during the Bush administration. All these millionaires that keep giving him $400 million for him to not win one election — maybe it’s not working! Maybe it’s not working.

Give me five freakin’ dollars — I’ll tell you for free what we gotta do. You can’t keep going and trying to get white men, because they’re dying off; it’s not a demographic anymore. We need the single women. But you don’t care. Seriously, I hate Karl Rove.

I give her a pass for not mentioning that her father nominated a know nothing lunatic for Vice Presidential nomination. It’s her father after all.

Surprise: using the FHA as a dumping ground not good for the FHA

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The FHA has become the mortgage guarantor for too many bad mortgages:

While these are welcome trends, figures released today from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) throw a sobering splash of cold water. FHA’s FY 2012 Actuarial Study for its main single family program shows that its capital position has turned negative, by $13.5 billion. That’s a shift of $23 billion in economic value in a single year, and it puts the 78-year-old agency $34.5 billion short of its legal capital requirement.

[…]

The implosion of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008 did not end the government’s massive — and distorting — role in the housing market. Instead, in the wake of their bailouts (taxpayers have forked over $180 billion and counting), much of the risk was simply shifted to the FHA. Indeed, FHA’s insurance portfolio quadrupled in the past 5 years to $1.1 trillion today. The result is that FHA now guarantees 16 percent of all US mortgages, and 30 percent of all new home purchase mortgages. This is not an accidental trend: the FHA deliberately tried to “grow” its way out trouble, essentially betting the house on housing’s recovery. Friday’s numbers confirm that like Fannie and Freddie, it’s easy to gamble when the taxpayer covers your losses.

This wasn’t a surprise.Researchpublished last fall by the American Enterprise Institute showed that the agency had become as overleveraged as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns before their fall. Barring a dramatic economic recovery, the report noted that the increasingly poor-quality loans the FHA absorbed to grow its portfolio would compel the agency to seek a multibillion dollar bailout. Since then, AEI’s monthly“FHA Watch”has chronicled the agency’s slide into insolvency.

source: The Next Housing Bailout? Big Trouble Brewing at the FHA – Edward J. Pinto – The Atlantic.

It’s great AEI (a conservative think tank that is against programs like the FHA) began tracking the FHA troubles after the agency absorbed guarantees for poor quality loans that increasingly existed because of lax financial regulation climate the AEI encouraged.

Solar Prominence!

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On Tuesday and Wednesday (Nov. 13 and 14), space weather conditions sparked a geomagnetic storm that supercharged the Earth’s auroras, creating spectacular northern lights displays for observers at high latitudes.

When aimed directly at Earth, the most powerful solar flares and eruptions can pose a threat to satellites and astronauts in orbit, and also interfere with communication, navigation and power systems on the ground.

The sun is currently in the middle of an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle. The current cycle is called Solar Cycle 24 and is expected to peak in 2013.

source: Giant Sun Eruption Captured in NASA Video: Big Pics : Discovery News.

Occupy Wall Street’s raises $5 Million to purchase & forgive debt

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Members of Occupy Wall Street last week announced the formation of “Rolling Jubilee,” a fundraising campaign that would be used to purchase outstanding debt and then abolish it. And as of Friday, the campaign has already raised enough to eliminate more than $5.7 million in personal debt, according to its web site.

source: Occupy Wall Street’s ‘Rolling Jubilee’ Raises Enough To Abolish $5 Million In Debt | ThinkProgress.

This is a great idea.