OBAMA'S TELEPROMPTER RUNS FOR PRESIDENT

Iowahawk reported that XD-235, the staff teleprompter for the Obama Presidential Campaign has issues with the Obama campaign.

Now we learn that XD235 has left the Obama Presidental Campaign and is itself running for President. Pajamas Media's Roger L. Simon has an exclusive interview.

THANKS, CONGRESS

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, for the month of September through today:
My retirement savings are down nearly 30% since the first of the year; 15% of that in the last week.

Please, don't help me any more.

PALIN PROTEST

Little Green Footballs reports on an anti-Palin protest in southern California:
















Perhaps she should vote with her vagina - the brain certainly isn't working.

PALIN ENDORSEMENT

Don Surber takes note of Dolly Parton’s endorsement of Sarah Palin:

“Question: What pair of stars came out for Republican Sarah Palin?
Answer: Dolly Parton.”

Commenter John responds:

“Dude, [t]hat’s the third keyboard you owe me this week.“

And commenter no, not THAT Glenn adds:

“The link to Michael Silence’s newspaperblog yields reader comment: ‘What do you have if Dolly Parton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden walk out on stage together? A Country Western star and two of the biggest boobs you’ve ever seen.’”

PORK WATCH

Neal Boortz helpfully supplied a list of just some of the breaks essential enough to be included in the Wall Street "rescue" bill.

Sec. 101. Extension of alternative minimum tax relief for nonrefundable personal credits.
Sec. 102. Extension of increased alternative minimum tax exemption amount.
Sec. 103. Increase of AMT refundable credit amount for individuals with longterm unused credits for prior year minimum tax liability, etc.
Sec. 201. Deduction for State and local sales taxes.
Sec. 202. Deduction of qualified tuition and related expenses.
Sec. 203. Deduction for certain expenses of elementary and secondary school teachers.
Sec. 204. Additional standard deduction for real property taxes for nonitemizers.
Sec. 205. Tax-free distributions from individual retirement plans for charitable purposes.
Sec. 206. Treatment of certain dividends of regulated investment companies.
Sec. 207. Stock in RIC for purposes of determining estates of nonresidents not citizens.
Sec. 208. Qualified investment entities.
Sec. 301. Extension and modification of research credit.
Sec. 302. New markets tax credit.
Sec. 303. Subpart F exception for active financing income.
Sec. 304. Extension of look-thru rule for related controlled foreign corporations.
Sec. 305. Extension of 15-year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements and qualified restaurant improvements; 15-year straight-line cost recovery for certain improvements to retail space.
Sec. 306. Modification of tax treatment of certain payments to controlling exempt organizations.
Sec. 307. Basis adjustment to stock of S corporations making charitable contributions of property.
Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
Sec. 310. Extension of mine rescue team training credit.
Sec. 311. Extension of election to expense advanced mine safety equipment.
Sec. 312. Deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic production activities in Puerto Rico.
Sec. 313. Qualified zone academy bonds.
Sec. 314. Indian employment credit.
Sec. 315. Accelerated depreciation for business property on Indian reservations.
Sec. 316. Railroad track maintenance.
Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.
Sec. 318. Expensing of environmental remediation costs.
Sec. 319. Extension of work opportunity tax credit for Hurricane Katrina employees.
Sec. 320. Extension of increased rehabilitation credit for structures in the Gulf Opportunity Zone.
Sec. 321. Enhanced deduction for qualified computer contributions.
Sec. 322. Tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
Sec. 323. Enhanced charitable deductions for contributions of food inventory.
Sec. 324. Extension of enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of book inventory.
Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds.
Sec. 401. Permanent authority for undercover operations.
Sec. 402. Permanent authority for disclosure of information relating to terrorist activities.
Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.
Sec. 502. Provisions related to film and television productions.
Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.
Sec. 504. Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation.
Sec. 505. Certain farming business machinery and equipment treated as 5-year property.
Sec. 506. Modification of penalty on understatement of taxpayer's liability by tax return preparer.
Sec. 512. Mental health parity.
Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program.
Sec. 602. Transfer to abandoned mine reclamation fund.
Sec. 702. Temporary tax relief for areas damaged by 2008 Midwestern severe storms, tornados, and flooding.
Sec. 703. Reporting requirements relating to disaster relief contributions.
Sec. 704. Temporary tax-exempt bond financing and low-income housing tax relief for areas damaged by Hurricane Ike.
Sec. 706. Losses attributable to federally declared disasters.
Sec. 707. Expensing of Qualified Disaster Expenses.
Sec. 708. Net operating losses attributable to federally declared disasters.
Sec. 709. Waiver of certain mortgage revenue bond requirements following federally declared disasters.
Sec. 710. Special depreciation allowance for qualified disaster property.
Sec. 711. Increased expensing for qualified disaster assistance property.
Sec. 712. Coordination with Heartland disaster relief.
Sec. 801. Nonqualified deferred compensation from certain tax indifferent parties.

Congress should be fired en masse and replaced with 535 residents drawn at random from the population of the town of Wasilla.

MY TAKE ON THE WALL STREET "RESCUE"

"If prostitution is illegal, why is congress still operating?"

PHOTOBLOGGING

Historic church, now abandoned. Old Town, Manassas, VA.




















City Tavern Grille, Old Town, Manassas, VA

NO! NO! NO!

Dear Congresscritter:

I am writing to express my view of the latest version of the “rescue” bill. I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that some Government intervention is needed to restore liquidity to the financial system. But the operative word is “some,” meaning a limited intervention doing just the minimum to restore liquidity.

My reading of the news today suggests that the current version before the Senate does not meet that criteria. It will extend a number of renewable energy tax breaks for individuals and businesses; it will continue other expiring tax breaks, including the research and development credit for businesses and the credit that allows individuals to deduct state and local sales taxes on their federal returns. It will include relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax; and it will include a "Mental Health Parity" provision, requiring health insurance companies to cover mental illness as it would physical illness.

These elements are mere social engineering, irrelevant to the liquidity crisis. So I urge you to vote “No! Absolutely not!” Repeat that vote, again and again, until a clean bill addressing just the liquidity crisis is presented.

No bailouts. No. Never.

Respectfully,

HOGWASH

This morning Fox News and other outlets are reporting that the financial markets lost over a trillion dollars overnight.

Utter nonsense. To borrow a phrase from Mike Baker, "What a load of crap!"

The market didn't lose a damn dime. I did. You did. Anyone who has a pension, retirement savings account, mutual fund, or a few stocks and bonds did.

Memo to the media: report the facts.

ANSWER: DAMIFINO

QUESTION: WHAT DO I MAKE OF TODAY’S VOTE ON THE BAILOUT?

What I do know is that the Democrats voted for it 141-94; Republicans opposed it 66-132.

What I do know is that the Democrats have a majority in the House; they could have passed the bill 235-198 if they were willing to accept ownership of the result.

What I do know is that the majority party is insisting that the minority party is responsible for the bill not passing.

What I do know is that the American people strongly opposed the bailout. And anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that the NO votes came from congresscritters from contested districts.

Given that, it seems to me that the bailout was wisely rejected.

Next question: which Presidential candidate will step up to the plate?

UH, HUH

From INSTAPUNDIT:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working."

Tell me something I don’t know ....

THOUGHTS ON THE BAILOUT

It appears that the outline, at least, of the bailout legislation has been mostly agreed to. Powerline has a side-by-side comparison of the final outline with both the Paulson and Democratic proposals here. I’ve looked at the comparison, and I tend to agree with Powerline: “House Republicans negotiated on behalf of the taxpayers; without their resistance to the original deal that the White House and Congressional Democrats signed off on, the bailout unquestionably would have been worse.”

The question is, did the Republicans succeed in improving the legislation? I don’t know. I think the conventional wisdom is correct – something needs to be done, and quickly – but it should be the minimum necessary to free up the credit markets. I’m not sure this is the minimum necessary.

McCAIN – 1; NYT – 0

The New York Times attempts to link the McCain campaign with Freddie Mac:

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The disclosure undercuts a remark by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the two people said.

They said they did not recall Mr. Davis’s doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than to speak to a political action committee of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the approaching midterm Congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of his close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House.

The McCain campaign fires back:

The New York Times has never published a single investigative piece, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, his consulting and lobbying clients, and Senator Obama. Likewise, the New York Times never published an investigative report, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and Senator Obama, who appointed Johnson head of his VP search committee, until the writing was on the wall and Johnson was under fire following reports from actual news organizations (emphasis mine) that he had received preferential loans from predatory mortgage lender Countrywide.

The NYT is not an “actual news organization?” Imagine that.

RUSSIA FROM ALASKA?

Russia from Alaska: taken at 10:05 pm EDT, 27 September 2008.


The camera is here.


Another view taken at 10:29 pm EDT

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

Angry Bear has a suggestion for funding the bailout.

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction.

After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully
Minister of Treasury Paulson

Via the Volokh Conspiracy.

MORE ON THE BAILOUT

From Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy:

I was mildly in favor of the bailout until I read Dodd's proposed statute. The way that the statute is drafted is so tricky and its definition of profit is so unsophisticated and nonsensical that the statute smells more of graft than of an honest attempt to solve the financial crisis. We are moving from failed "crony capitalism" to failed "crony community organizing."

Emphasis is mine. The text of the proposed statute is here.

WHO'S AT FAULT?

If this video is even roughly correct, and it passes my personal smell test, then Sen. McCain did the American taxpayer a great favor if he indeed did cause the bailout proposal to blow up in Congress's face.

MORON COLLIDER

The Brewster Rockit cartoon has been having a great deal of fun mocking the Large Hadron Collider, and today Tim Rickard (accidentally?) nailed Congress (I changed only three words).

Enjoy.

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE NOTES

Obama did better than I expected, but I wasn’t initially impressed with either candidate. It seemed like they were trading sound bites.

During the early discussion of taxes, why didn’t McCain point out to Obama that corporations don’t pay taxes; that they’re simply a cost of doing business that is reflected in the prices we pay?

Obama kept harping on how much the war in Iraq cost, but never pressed the obvious point: that when he ended the war, the money could be refunded to the American taxpayers. He couldn’t; he needs the money to pay for his programs.

JOURNALISTIC HYSTERIA

In watching the pre-debate journalistic hysteria, I’m reminded of a comment by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal in his “Best of the Web” column of 15 September: “What's the difference between a journalist and a watchdog? Rabies.”