What appears below is a direct quote from an article written by The Heritage Foundation on July 14, 2008.  You can link to it at The Heritage Foundation.

“In 2004, after a tip from a whistle blower who was later fired, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (Ofheo) issued a report finding that the government-sponsored entity Fannie Mae had engaged in Enron-like accounting machinations that allowed Fannie to overstate its earnings and underestimate the risk the company faced. The accounting wizardry Fannie engaged in was designed so that Fannie could meet profit targets to maximize bonus payments to company executives like Clinton administration deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick and Carter administration assistant director for domestic policy Franklin Raines.

For years, conservatives have been critical of how Fannie, and Freddie Mac, have leveraged their government-sponsored advantages (including exemptions from state and federal taxes, lower capital requirements, and the ability to borrow at rates well below those paid by private companies), to create a co-monopoly in the housing finance sector. When Fannie’s accounting scandal came to light in 2004, conservatives pushed hard for reforms to phase out Fannie and Freddie. Led by former Walter Mondale and Barack Obama campaign adviser James Johnson, Fannie and Freddie pushed back hard, raising millions of dollars for members of the relevant oversight committees and opening up “Partnership Offices” that funneled money into various housing projects in districts of key members of Congress.

Fannie also bought off activist groups such as the corrupt Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which has been indicted, multiple times across the country, for vote fraud (Obama worked closely with ACORN as a street organizer in Chicago). Fannie’s lobbying efforts paid off as liberal politicians such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.) worked to kill any real reform of Freddie and Fannie. The Washington Post reports: “In an internal memo in 2004, Fannie Mae executive Daniel H. Mudd affirmed what the company’s critics had long contended: In the political arena, ‘we always won’ and ‘we took no prisoners.'”

Fannie was created during the New Deal to make homes more affordable for lower- and middle-income Americans. Freddie was added years later for the same purpose. Fannie and Freddie have long outlived their purpose as the market for repackaging loans as securities is now well developed. When the housing market is booming, they are not needed, and they have both gone well beyond their original mission and are now backing loans for wealthy (witness Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s continued efforts to raise the cap on the size of the loans that Fannie and Freddie can buy).

Many parts of the bill the Senate passed last week only continue the worst aspects of the crony capitalism at the hard of Freddie’s success. This is especially true of the Community Development Block Grant funds that have long been a goal of partisan housing activist groups like ACORN. There is an opportunity here to use the recapitalization the White House is now proposing to re-organize housing finance by breaking up Fannie and Freddie and creating several smaller truly private entities that can compete.”

It should be noted that the two senators to receive the most money in campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie are Chris Dodd and Barack Obama.

One of the biggest threats to a healthy democracy is voter fraud.  Here are two stories relating to that problem in the coming election.  First in National Review Online there is an article about fraud in absentee ballots, and second in digital journal there is another example of ACORN being involved in voter registration fraud.  Unless we want to live in a banana republic where elections mean nothing, we need to deal with this problem.  Again, I would like to see some sort of voter identification system to prevent both these types of fraud.

There is an article in today’s New York Post relating talks that Obama had with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari during Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq this past summer.  The Foreign Minister charges that while Obama was promising the American electorate that he wanted the troops out in sixty days, he was asking Iraq to leave the troops there until after the US elections and also stated that he wanted congress involved in any agreements involving the withdrawal of troops.  This is a direct violation of the Logan Act, which according to Wikipedia is “a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. It was passed in 1799 and last amended in 1994. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years.”  Aside from that, I would not be willing to let congress negotiate anything at this point.  Anyway, this is incredibly stupid on the part of Obama.  It is a strictly political calculation that I hope will badly misfire.  As a military mom, I resent our troops being used as political pawns.

Sometimes it’s the little things that go unnoticed that can turn out to make the biggest difference.  Sometime in the last two or three weeks, our policy toward Pakistan changed.  We are no longer letting the Taliban use the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan as a safe haven.  I’m not sure whether this is a result of better cooperation with the new government of Pakistan or frustration with the fact that American, NATO, and Afghani troops and security forces have lost more men in the first nine months of this year than they did in all of last year.  At any rate, this is a game-changer, and may be the prelude to the kind of turnaround in Afghanistan that we have seen in Iraq.  To me, though, one of the main problems in Afghanistan is that other than the illegal poppy crop, these people have no visible means of support.  I know we are building power plants to give them electricity, and that may help, but until we give them an economic alternative to an illegal drug trade that funds terrorism, we will be fighting an uphill battle.

Just one more comment about the war in Afghanistan.  The war in Afghanistan has essentially been under NATO, and there have been some problems with that.  Canada has contributed greatly and lost a large number of troops in that war, but some of the European NATO members have not even been willing to allow their troops to go into combat.  Because of what is happening to the demographics in Europe (and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Spain), many European countries are afraid to fight the war on terrorism openly.  This does not bode well for the future of democracy.

There is an article on the war in Afghanistan and a link to an interview with Ollie North concerning the war at CBN News.

I can totally relate to this article in the American Thinker.  I met with a conservative woman’s group yesterday in Massachusetts.  There were four of us there!  Anyway, it’s a great article.

The website outloudopinion.com has a good editorial from the Friday, September 12, 2008, edition of Investor’s Business Daily entitled “Tough Truths About Obama’s Character”.  The site reads the editorial to you–I have no idea how to link the actual written article.  It takes a minute to load, but is worth listening to.

Michael Yon has been an embedded reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past three years.  He is a former Green Beret.  He raises his own support for the work he does; and, I believe, he is one of the most honest and insightful correspondents of the Iraq war.  His website is michaelyon-online.com and this link will lead you to the home page.  However, there is an article on his website titled The End Game In Iraq that is very interesting.  The article was written by people who know Michael, not by Michael.You have to download the adobe file to get all five pages of it, but it evaluates where we are and what we can expect when on September 16, General Raymond Odierno will succeed General David Petraeus.  

One of the recent problems Barack Obama is having is the fact that he has begun to appear tone deaf.  The comment about lipstick on a pig may have been perfectly innocent, but after Sarah Palin’s comment about hockey moms, people were bound to make a connection.  If you listen to the crowd reaction to that comment, you get the feeling that there was no doubt in their minds what he meant.  OK.  We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.  He was tone deaf–not mean, and he didn’t realize when he heard the crowd reaction that he needed to clarify his comment.  He needed to be more tuned into what was happening to avoid the charges of sexism.  He does better with a teleprompter.

OK.  Now we have the McCain is old–he doesn’t do email commercial.   Jonah Goldberg has an article up on The National Review Online in which he cites a 2000 Boston Globe article that says the following:

:McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan – Ted Williams is his hero – but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.”

If the information gets out about McCain not being able to type, it will make the Obama campaign ad look cruel.  I don’t think that’s a good idea.

I didn’t link to the Boston Globe article.  It was written during the 2000 Republican primary campaign, and other than explaining why John McCain doesn’t type, it is somewhat irrelevant, which is generally my opinion of the Boston Globe.

The following was posted on HotAir.com this afternoon by Ed Morrissey.

The outpouring of enthusiasm and support for Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate has been almost unprecedented, an amazing reversal of the political currents for the past two years.  Few believed even two months ago that Republicans could generate widespread enthusiasm for their ticket, let alone approach the fervor seen from Barack Obama supporters.  McCain was simply too well known for that kind of explosive popularity, and the Republican brand too damaged.

At the same time, though, we have to guard against the same kind of cult of personality that arose around Obama and continues to this day.  We want the large crowds, but we need to have them pay attention to the message.  That message can’t just consist of “hockey mom” and “pit bull”, but a coherent public-policy philosophy along with a demonstration of how Palin’s record and experience supports it.  Otherwise, we run the risk of making Palin into a reverse cartoon from the bubble-headed, trailer-trash yokel that the media has begun to paint.

That means being realistic about Palin’s experience.  As governor for only 20 months, she has more executive experience than Barack Obama, but that’s a quip, not an argument.  McCain chose her because she has a record of real reform, and of risk-taking in cleaning up politics, that includes more than just her term as Governor.  We need to press that message and show how Palin commits McCain to change by outlining her achievements over the last several years, and focus on that rather than the Palin family.  We have to acknowledge that Palin’s choice carried risk but that we needed a running mate like Palin to return the GOP and Washington to a path of reform, and the same old players in Washington wouldn’t do.  Otherwise, we won’t convince anyone of the wisdom of Palin’s presence on the ticket.

We’ve been fortunate in one regard: for some reason, Barack Obama has chosen to run against Sarah Palin rather than John McCain in the last two weeks.  We win that argument every time in two ways: Obama can’t beat Palin on experience, and McCain winds up looking like the only person running for President.  However, we can’t count on that foolishness lasting forever, and we need to have a real argument for a McCain-Palin partnership as our main message when it ends.  We have less than eight weeks to define Palin as the reformer and political prodigy she proved herself to be in Alaska.

Personality makes a great splash.  Let’s get past it to make the real arguments now.

There is a new Obama commercial just out that criticizes McCain for being old.  Evidently John McCain is not computer savvy.  Wow.  How many senior citizens does that apply to?  The only reason I know how to use a computer is because my husband is an ‘it’ person.  Otherwise there would be no hope.  I live in a house with two people and four working computers.  I had to learn how to use one.  Anyway, the tag is that McCain is out of touch because he’s old, and we can’t afford another President who is out of touch. 

The current President is not out of touch.  I happen to support President Bush and think that history will treat him very differently than his contemporary liberal media.  The one criticism of George Bush that I feel is totally valid is that he has not successfully communicated the message to the American people that we are at war (not because we invaded Iraq, but because Al Qaeda declared war on us).  The fact that we are at war should create a desire to have our own sources of oil for our military, it should encourage us to pull together instead of constantly playing politics, and it should impact our behavior as people and as a nation much more strongly than it does. 

Anyway, I question the wisdom of saying someone would not make a good President because he is old.  I believe that’s called age discrimination.  In the workplace that is illegal!

Charles Krauthammer’s column in  today’s The Washington Post is a fascinating look at the rise and fall of Barack Obama.  Obama is by no means out of the race, but there is an old expression, ‘it’s not where you are–it’s the direction in which you are moving’, at this moment it looks like Obama’s momentum is moving in the wrong direction.  The only thing I would add to Charles Krauthammer’s comments is that if the media builds you up, but you have no internal foundation, the building will not stand.  Obama may have been a successful community organizer, but if you look at the community he organized, it is in worse shape now than it was before he started.

Everyone over the age of thirteen remembers where they were seven years ago today.  Some children even younger remember because mommy or daddy never came home from work.  Some parking lot attendants in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts remember because they didn’t know which cars would ever be picked up.  I remember because I worked with a lady named Sally whose daughter worked in the second tower.  Sally waited for a telephone call telling her that her daughter was safe.  That call never came.  I remember because my own daughter lived a few blocks from the trade center.  She was fine.

My condolences to everyone who lost a loved one on that day.  I stand in awe of the bravery of the fireman, policemen, military personnel, and ordinary people who performed heroic acts and saved lives.  I thank God for the men and women in our military who have done everything they could since that day to see that we are not attacked again. 

We are not invincible.  At some point, something will get through.  We will never know about the attacks that are prevented, and that is probably a good thing.  I only hope that when we are again threatened or attacked in some way, we remember to focus on the big picture instead of our little political squabbles.

Out of respect for the people whose lives were changed irreparably on September 11, 2001, there will be no political posts on this site today.  Tomorrow is soon enough.

The campaign for President seems a little crazy right now.  I’m not even going to deal with the silliness with lipstick on a pig or a pit bull or the abortion comment, but I do have an observation.  Barack Obama seems to be more interested in running against Sarah Palin than in running against John McCain.  The Palin effect seems to have unnerved him.  He reminds me of a baby chick–if you help a baby chick hatch, it will die, because in hatching it develops the strength it needs to survive.  Barack Obama has never run against a strong opponent before–he managed to force any strong opponent out of the race through scandal or questioning signatures until the opposition gave up.  He never reached an actual campaign where he fought a strong opponent.  I think his success in forcing his opponents out of the race before they had a chance is hurting him now.  He has no idea how to run a successful campaign against a strong opponent.

The links have been disabled, but I suspect you can find most of them at American Solutions. 

“I just finished up a radio interview with Sean Hannity and I wanted to share with you some exciting news. I was on Sean’s show to debut country music star Aaron Tippin’s new single entitled “Drill Here, Drill Now.” The song was inspired by our “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” movement and masterfully captures the pulse of Americans who are tired of paying too much for gas while Congress does nothing about it. You can listen to the interview here.

As a country music fan, I’ve always known Aaron as an outspoken artist who takes a stand for hardworking Americans. And when I first heard his song, I knew it would become the rallying cry for more American-made energy. Just read the opening lines of the song and you’ll see why:

Hello…..Is anybody out there listenin’ in Washington D.C.
This is the suffering voice of America crying out for relief
Now I don’t know what a gallon of gas costs up on Capitol Hill
But we sure know what it costs down here in Realityville

If you’re anything like me, once you hear this song you’ll immediately want to forward it to your friends and family so they can hear it too.

Can you help us make this song a huge hit by downloading it today and asking your local radio stations to play it?

You can download or preview the song at www.AmericanSolutions.com/DrillSong. A powerful collision between pop culture and politics, this terrific song is sure to take America’s airwaves – and Capitol Hill – by storm.

Thank you for everything you do.

Your friend,

Newt Gingrich

P.S. In light of President Bush’s July announcement to eliminate the executive ban on offshore drilling, the U.S. Minerals Management Service has decided to initiate a new plan to increase energy production on the outer continental shelf (OCS).  As part of the regulatory process, the agency is calling for public comments on offshore oil and gas development through September 15, 2008.

In the meantime, unfortunately, Congress is planning votes on bills that would actually make all or part of the offshore drilling ban permanent.”

Today is September 10, 2008.  Seven years ago, it was the day before.  We were all going about our business, enjoying a beautiful fall, and making plans for the future.  I wonder, if we could have seen into the future, is there anything we would have done differently that day. 

There was one man who was living in a different world than the rest of us–even on September 10.  His name was Rick Rescorla.  He was the vice president for security at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, a brokerage house with 2,700 employees in the World Trade Center in the south tower on floors forty-four through seventy-four and 1,000 employees in Building Five across the plaza.  Because of the foresight of this man, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter lost only six employees in the bombing of the World Trade Center.  His story is told on his website, RickRescorla.com.

Rick felt strongly that the terrorists who had attempted the first World Trade Center bombing would try again.  He asked his company executives to move from the towers, but the company’s lease went until 2006.  Rick held evacuation drills on a regular basis in spite of the grumbling of his fellow employees.  Every few months all 2,700 employees would march down the stairs and out of the building in an evacuation drill.  On September 11, 2001, by the time the second airplane hit the second tower, most of the company’s employees were already out of the building.  There were three employees missing, and Rick and two other people went back into the building to find them.   All six were killed when the building collapsed.¹

I tell this story today for two reasons.  First, Rick Rescorla is a hero whose foresight saved many lives.  Second, Rick Rescorla understood that there were terrorists who wanted to destroy America even before there was a “war on terror”.  We need to think back to September 10, 2001, and remember what our innocence was like and the price we paid for it.  Thank God for a man who chose not to be innocent.

1.  Most of the information in the above paragraphs is from the book BREAKDOWN by Bill Gertz (subtitled “How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11”).

FactCheck.org has a great article refuting the current charges against Sarah Palin.  I particularly like the one where she is accused of banning books from the town library.  What I really like about this charge is the fact that FactCheck points out that some of these books were not even published at the time she is accused of banning them.  Way to do your opposition research!

I can say that ’cause I live in a town even smaller than Wasilla, Alaska.  Anyway, The Wall Street Journal (John Fund) is reporting that the Democrats have sent 30 lawyers, investigators, and opposition researchers into Anchorage and Wasilla to see what they could find to use against Sarah Palin.  If only they did this kind of research on spending, energy, and government corruption–something might actually get accomplished!  Anyway, get ready.  These are the tactics from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals–the politics of personal destruction.  Watch the front page of your local and national newspaper, and I am sure you will see the results of their efforts.

The American Thinker has an article evaluating where we are 30 years after Camp David.  It’s interesting reading; here are the ‘money’ paragraphs.

Just a quick note on the knee injury to Tom Brady.  There are two teams in the AFC East I root for, the Patriots is one of them.  It is always a shame to see a gifted athlete get injured, and Tom Brady is a gifted athlete who has been there for the Patriots through thick and thin.  I wish him a successful recovery and a great season next year.  Meanwhile, moving right along, I think this will make the AFC East a very interesting division to watch this year–any team could take it!

This You Tube Campaign Ad is the best argument I have heard in this campaign.  Watch the whole thing; the end is as important as the beginning.  Thank you, Bill P., for sending me this link.

On August 5, 2008, The Village Voice ran a rather lengthy article on how Andrew Cuomo, as the youngest Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in our history, made a series of decisions that led to our current crisis (and bailout) of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Among other things, the article states

“It all starts, as the headlines of recent weeks do, with these two giant banks. But in the hubbub about their bailout, few have noticed that the only federal agency with the power to regulate what Cuomo has called “the gods of Washington” was HUD. Congress granted that power in 1992, so there were only four pre-crisis secretaries at the notoriously political agency that had the ability to rein in Fannie and Freddie: ex-Texas mayor Henry Cisneros and Bush confidante Alfonso Jackson, who were driven from office by criminal investigations; Mel Martinez, who left to chase a U.S. Senate seat in Florida; and Cuomo, who used the agency as a launching pad for his disastrous 2002 gubernatorial candidacy.”  The article is complicated, but worth reading.

I understand that we need to do this bailout, despite the fact that it will cost all of us (and our children) a great deal of money, but we need to find a way to prevent this from happening again.  It’s time to tell Washington that they need to be more careful with our money.  It’s a shame that the cost of the bailout can’t be paid for by the huge bonuses given to mortgage company executives during the time the foundation was being laid for the crisis in which we now find outselves, or better still, we could take the money out of the retirement accounts of the congressmen who passed the laws that allowed this to happen.  The other thing to take notice of in this bailout is which politicians received sweetheart mortgage deals from the mortgage companies being bailed out.

It is definitely the silly season.  If you haven’t heard the flap about the flags in Denver (and if you care), see Hot Air for the story (or nonstory, depending on your opinion).  By itself this is nothing more than a campaign worker dropping the ball on one of may details of the convention.  The only reason it even remotely found its way into the press is that it is in harmony with a picture already out there–the picture of William Ayers standing on the American flag.  It also brings up the flip-flop by Obama on wearing a flag lapel pin.  Obama says he loves this country–that is probably true, but he reminds me of the husband who criticizes his wife for twenty minutes while saying he loves her.  He is so focused on her mistakes, he can’t see the good in her.  I don’t imagine it’s fun to be married to someone like that.  Do you want someone who sees America in that light running the country?

Diane West has an editorial in The Washington Times today about the difference in treatment of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama.  I still find it interesting that the media is focusing on Sarah Palin–not John McCain, and very little is being said about Joe Biden.  Hmmm.

Just when the mainstream media thinks it has a lock on opinion (not science) some researcher comes along and confuses things with facts and statistics!

Power Line Blog has an article about Professor Roger Pielke listing the findings of U.S. Climate Change Science Program.  The article is interesting because it states facts based on statistics, not politics.