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What is this system of justice, Lohan walks after 13 hours. Tax cheats are the only ones who can keep the treasury together and write the tax laws.

Celebrities and politicians make a mockery of the laws that seem frightening to the rest of us, not that I am concerned with drugs except for people driving while stoked up, but I have had to wrestle with the IRS for paying taxes and living in another country. They are tough. Unless you are a politician. Is it no wonder people are losing respect for the law and the country.

Now a word or two on “Gated Communities” that some can relate to if they look at it for face value and don’t let their Politics get in the way…

How privileged Democrats pay for their houses

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/09/24/how-privileged-democrats-pay-for-their-houses/

Like millions of Americans, Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell has had trouble covering her mortgage and other bills over the years. Her opponents consider this a scandal of disqualifying proportions. But there’s a bigger disgrace: It’s all the sanctimonious Democrats who have exploited their entrenched political incumbency to pay for multiple manses and vacation homes — while posing as vox populi.

How privileged Democrats pay for their houses
By Michelle Malkin • September 24, 2010 11:31 AM

How privileged Democrats pay for their houses
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Like millions of Americans, Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell has had trouble covering her mortgage and other bills over the years. Her opponents consider this a scandal of disqualifying proportions. But there’s a bigger disgrace: It’s all the sanctimonious Democrats who have exploited their entrenched political incumbency to pay for multiple manses and vacation homes — while posing as vox populi.

Former senior senator from Delaware and current Vice President Joe Biden has a custom-built house in Delaware’s ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood. It is now worth at least $2.5 million and is the Bidens’ most valuable asset. Biden tapped campaign funds to pay for his compound’s lawn needs. He secured the new estate with the help of a corporate executive who worked for Biden’s top campaign donor, credit card giant MBNA.

In 1996, Biden sold his previous mansion to MBNA Vice Chairman John Cochran. The asking price was $1.2 million. Cochran forked over the full sum. Biden then paid $350,000 in cash to real estate developer Keith Stoltz for a 4.2-acre lakefront lot. Stoltz had paid that same amount five years earlier for the undeveloped property.

Stoltz told the Wilmington News Journal that “the residential real estate market was soft” at the time he sold the land to Biden. But “soft” for whom? Stoltz was a well-off businessman who didn’t appear to be in such dire financial straits that he needed to unload the property quickly in a weak market.

Reporter Byron York looked at comparable properties in Biden’s neighborhood and found three cases where homes in the area went “for a good deal less than their appraised value. In comparison, it appears Cochran simply paid Biden’s full asking price.”

Biden’s office denied any sweetheart deals took place, but York noted that it appeared MBNA indirectly helped Cochran buy the Biden house through six-figure executive compensation funds listed as moving expenses and losses suffered on the sale of his previous home.

To be clear, no laws were broken. These arrangements were simply a continuation of Biden’s decades-long, Beltway business-as-usual relationships with a deep-pocketed corporate benefactor — which, by the way, later hired his son. Nice nepotism, if you can get it.

North Dakota Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd made cozy arrangements with subprime sleaze lender Countrywide. Portfolio.com reported that Conrad “borrowed $1.07 million in 2004 to refinance his vacation home with a balcony and wraparound porch in Bethany Beach, Del., a block from the ocean.”

Senate Banking Chair Dodd received two discounted loans in 2003 through Countrywide’s VIP program. He borrowed $506,000 to refinance his elite townhouse in Washington, D.C., and $275,042 to refinance a home in East Haddam, Conn. Countrywide helpfully waived fractions of points on the loans. The lower interest rates could have saved Dodd a combined $75,000 during the life of the 30-year loans.

Dodd had known about the preferential treatment on his loans since 2003, yet continued to deny that he was treated like a VIP, refused to acknowledge wrongdoing and encouraged government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to invest in Countrywide’s risky loans.

Not content with two shady home deals, Dodd got in on a real estate scheme for an Irish cottage and nearly 10 acres of land with William Kessinger, a businessman tied to his close friend, insider trader Edward R. Downe Jr.

Downe had pleaded guilty to tax and securities law violations and was banned for life from the business. In 2001, Dodd helped Downe obtain one of the treasured presidential pardons on Bill Clinton’s last day in office. A year after that, as Irish real estate prices went through the roof, Dodd purchased Kessinger’s share of the estate at a discount. He failed to include the obvious quid-pro-quo gift on Senate disclosure forms: Help a crooked friend, reap a cut-rate real estate deal.

Prominent members of Team Obama benefited from similar special home deals. Politico.com noted that the Clintons secured a $1.35 million loan from Democrat pal and fundraiser Terry McAuliffe for their New York estate; Obama special envoy Richard Holbrooke snagged a sweetheart loan to refinance his Telluride, Colo., ski vacation home from the Countrywide VIP program; and Obama’s close confidante and erstwhile vice presidential search committee panelist Jim Johnson accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate loans from Countrywide.

Then there’s President Barack Obama’s own $1.7 million Chicago manse — which was financed with a discounted mortgage from Northern Trust and infamously included a shady land swap with convicted felon donor/developer Tony Rezko. A report released by the Federal Election Commission in February 2009 underscored that the Obamas received reduced loan rates (saving $300 a month, or $108,000 over the life of a 30-year loan) because of their high-profile positions.

Northern Trust offered the super jumbo loan to the Obamas in anticipation of entering “long-term financial relationships” with the successful couple. The FEC refused to call the Obamas’ mortgage deal an illegal corporate contribution, but it was an obvious act of favor-trading. Northern Trust employees had contributed $71,000 to Obama since 1990.

Does the term “Follow the Money” apply here? 😉

I’ve seen Dodd’s Irish cottage, most Irish consider it a mansion, most of us would also.

Maine Lobster is always good.
But it was even better today when all the profits from the meals went to one of my favorite charities.

And your photo of the fisherman is lovely.

@ Nan G…BOHICA… and Smile for the Cameras…

Skook, Check out Howies post at http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/ under Leave Lindsay Alone!!!##@!!!@@! That can give you a hint on why she was released!

CBC, Alcee Hastings, Pelosi and Obama are ganging up on Allen West, he says….”Welcome to the jungle.” 😉

Should one wish to contribute:

http://allenwestforcongress.com/

Mike Malloy hearts Dick Cheney. Would love to see Liz wring his skinny little chicken neck, such a pathetic excuse for a human. Listen to his scurrilous rant if you can stomach it:

@ Missy… I sent the 2K$ the legal max…

Take the Nation Back!

Hmmm, waiting for that middle aged Punk Rich Wheeler to comment…?

Semper What????

How do we end up with a fraud like obama, when we have real men like LtC West walking around.

God Help us when our President would rather lose a war than lose support from the Democrat party.

obama would be wonderful as mayor of Chicago, to assume he can function in the highest position in the world is insanity; he is truly our most outstanding mediocrity and he is more than willing to sacrifice all the lives that have been lost and broken in AFPAK to increase his chances of being reelected. This man is a disgrace and we are stuck with him for two more years!

He is not only willing to use our tax dollars to promote World Socialism, but he is willing to use the very lives of patriots to get reelected.

#9 Col. Crass Thanks for the shout out. At 66 I’ll take “middle age.”As for the “punk”
I’ll chalk that up to your general lack of civility.
West is in a tight race in a district I once lived in.In Fla. I see Rubio as top Conserv. in the country and a Pres. candidate someday.
O’Donnell loses big in Del. Repubs pick up 5 or 6 seats. but Dems hold Senate.
House race is close.
To question my patriotism is ridiculous.

I have a few friends who have moved to FLA.

They all encouraged us to help out Allen West.

We did.

I really hope he wins, but of course cannot personally vote for him.

The get-out-the-vote campaign better be really good in FLA.

That’s a tricky place.

(BTW, and totally off topic, the owner of the Segway company just died after he drove his Segway too close to a cliff and fell over it. Irony!)

Been very busy lately and don’t know if this has been posted. I think it’s pretty funny:

Obama Has No Clue

i would love to have this print of the fisherman in china. is this for sale somewhere and who took it or is it a painting?

on the new ABC show, No Ordinary Family (great show!) the villain wears an Obama mask! Thought you guys would get a kick out of that!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/181431/no-ordinary-family-pilot#s-p1-so-i0

Apparently a phony education profile has been created for Republican candidate Christine McDonnell over at LinkedIn.

In it she is purported to have lied about a couple of post-graduate programs.

Only thing is SHE didn’t post it.

Someone who wants to slime her did.

So, if you run across it, you are forewarned not to fall for the lies.

Her campaign released a statement from O’Donnell saying that the LinkedIn profile was not created by her and asked that it be taken down:

There have been reports that I have released false information on a LinkedIn profile under my name. This is categorically untrue. I never established a LinkedIn profile, or authorized anyone to do so on my behalf. I have always been clear about my educational background. I completed undergraduate work at Fairleigh Dickenson University. After my undergraduate work, I completed a summer program run by the Phoenix Institute, at the Institute’s Oxford University location. The Institute runs programs around the world at various universities, and participants study issues of human dignity. I also completed a Lincoln Fellowship at the Claremont Institute in Claremont, CA. We would encourage LinkedIn to remove this profile.

I AM TO BE BACK. tHANKS

It is rumored that NYC Mayor Bloomberg will soon be the next Treasury Secretary.

I have a serious question. Why would you replace the only man in America who can save the economy with a second rate ‘has been’ like Bloomberg? It is obviously a tough job, look at how much Geitner has struggled to keep us out of complete economic meltdown and he is the best in the world.

Keeping Geitner also insures America that he is at least paying his taxes. If the Obama carries out this plan, America will be in a Lose – Lose situation, we must stop the lunacy, before it is too late! 😆

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2010/20101001143219.aspx

@ mark …

With the improved economy, things are looking better.

OK, Ya got me…where is the “improved economy”, Pardner? Was it the “Summer of Recovery” that didn’t? Was it you looking forward to the expiration of Bush Tax Cuts that inspires you?

How about the bailouts for Fannie & Freddie that are coming and the high foreclosure rate on homes over the past few months? Or was it the phony numbers on employment that the temporary Census
Jobs were used to manipulate the Dept of Labor reports?

I reckon that you need to replace the batteries in your BS Detector.

@ Curt, it appears that your BS detector works pretty keen!

Every color but camo
Campus bigotry a social threat

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/every_color_but_camo_l0SRWP3FJcvvvzcfUCEnkL

Every color but camo

By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS

Last Updated: 12:23 AM, October 5, 2010

Posted: 10:01 PM, October 4, 2010

My daughter is looking through college-recruitment materials, and pretty much all of them go on at great length about “diversity.” To judge from the brochures — not only the text but also the relentless photos of ethnically diverse students in various settings — it’s apparently the single most important thing that any institution of higher learning can offer.

But though the photos contain representatives of almost every group imaginable, I don’t see any students in military uniform.

That’s because most of the “high-end” schools mailing us bulletins don’t offer ROTC — a failure of diversity that just attracted comment from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In a recent speech at Duke University, Gates noted that, since the end of the draft and the growth of the volunteer army, America’s military has grown increasingly distinct from those who view themselves as our nation’s intellectual leaders.

Gates chose Duke for his speech, presumably, because it’s one of the very few top schools to offer multiple ROTC programs. Elsewhere — at Harvard, for example — ROTC has been banished for decades.

Although Harvard expelled ROTC over the Vietnam War four decades ago (after antiwar students burned down the ROTC center), it now gives as a reason for not reinstating the program the military’s adherence to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — though that program was instituted under President Bill Clinton, who has not been similarly barred from the Harvard campus.

Nor has Harvard Law alumnus Barack Obama, who has maintained the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” policy — and who has urged Harvard to end the ROTC ban.

President Obama’s other alma mater, Columbia University, booted ROTC from its campus in 1969 and also hasn’t reinstated it. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who tortures and imprisons bloggers and other critics, is welcome at Columbia but not a program to train officers for the US military.

Yet the campus ROTC bans aren’t just a reminder of the political pettiness that still plagues America’s “top tier” universities; they also have serious costs for the nation.

As Gates noted, those who fight and die in America’s wars come disproportionately from the South and the West, not the Northeast, and from small towns, not big cities. They also come, disproportionately, from less elite colleges — something that wasn’t the case in the pre-Vietnam era.

A military that grows estranged from large parts of the civilian world is a bad thing. It is also a bad thing when large and influential parts of the civilian world — the universities that advertise that their graduates will be calling the shots in business and government — grow estranged from the military that defends them.

As even a brief glance around the globe demonstrates, when the military-civilian relationship goes bad, everything else goes bad along with it.

Yet Gates argues, surely correctly, that the two worlds are drifting apart. And it seems clear that this isn’t a case of the military’s rejecting Harvard, Columbia, et al. — but rather the reverse.

In short, we have a diversity problem. And as we know, when there is a diversity problem, virtually any degree of government intrusion is justified to set things right. For the moment, the tool of choice is moral suasion — but that may change.

Under the Solomon Amendment, Congress has already forced universities not to discriminate against military recruiters on campus, a law upheld by the Supreme Court (rejecting some rather weak First Amendment claims on the part of academic institutions). There seems no reason why Congress couldn’t go further and simply require universities to offer ROTC programs on campus.

This wouldn’t be much of a departure: The original Morrill Act, establishing land grants for higher education, required recipient institutions to offer military training. Nowadays, virtually every institution of higher learning receives federal funding, directly or indirectly. (And there may be no need for a connection to funding: If the feds can draft individuals for the defense of the nation, there seems no reason why they can’t draft institutions, too.)

Expansive federal powers to solve social ills are widely supported at our “top tier” universities, and we have reached the point where virtually everything is potentially subject to federal control: Witness New York City, which the feds are forcing to replace every single street sign, to the tune of $27 million, so that the street names will be in upper- and lower-case letters, rather than the traditional all caps.

If the federal government can do that, it can surely act to integrate our institutions of higher learning, even if their leaders choose to stand in the schoolhouse door.

After all, what’s more important than promoting diversity?

O.T. Great article As you know the Marine Corps has used the Platoon Leaders Class (P.L.C.) Program in colleges and universities to recruit and train it’s Officers. Maybe the other branches could look into similar programs.

Repectfully RJW

@ rich wheeler, The Army, Navy and Air Force have ROTC programs that grant Commissions and have for Decades. Where have you been? Tell me why those Ivy League schools that banned those Programs deserve any Federal Funding?

Are You not a Grad of one of those Schools than banned ROTC?
You must be very damn proud of that.

I am an OCS Commission with degrees from schools that offer the ROTC Programs.
Both UNC Chapel Hill and U of Maryland, as well as the War College.

By Law, any School that bans ROTC should not receive one dime of Federal Funding!

The 1996 Solomon Amendment is the popular name of 10 U.S.C. § 983, a United States federal law that allows the Secretary of Defense to deny federal grants (including research grants) to institutions of higher education if they prohibit or prevent ROTC or military recruitment on campus.

The Morrill Act was first proposed in 1857, and was passed by Congress in 1859, but it was vetoed by President James Buchanan. In 1861, Morrill resubmitted the act with the amendment that the proposed institutions would teach military tactics[3] as well as engineering and agriculture. Aided by the secession of many states that did not support the plans, this reconfigured Morrill Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862.

OT I am well aware of the R.O.T.C. programs and fully support them.Are you familiar with the Marine Corps P.L.C. program.This is how I earned my commission at Colgate U.Marine Corps does not have on campus R.O.T.C. program but does have O.C.S. Tarheels and Terrapins.Two great schools

Are you up for a Civics Quiz? 🙄

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

I have not taken one lately. Try your knowledge base!

OT 81.82% missed 6 Interesting citizens did better than elected officials. Thanks

@ rich wheeler, I have not taken it yet. I am in Tampa right now “working for the Yankee Dollar”, recalled to Active Duty for a month. Bad timing, Fall Roundup is going on back at the house. I have good hands on the job. I will ship out better than 800 head of Hereford Beef before November.

Every Commissioned type is subject to recall so I’m back in boots. 😉
I’ll post my score later this evening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWY4_GyLufI

Tomorrow we get the unemployment numbers for September.

So, 9.7% unemployment?

Maybe, but we might get a real bump from 2-day jobs watching the polls.

“The IRS has determined that all poll workers are considered employees of the Board of Elections for tax purposes.”

The IRS couldn’t produce such a ruling when I asked, although a spokesman did say it could be a private — and therefore, secret — determination. The Labor Dept. couldn’t find an IRS ruling on this matter either.

It’s possible that local governments could decide to count the poll workers as new employees even though they will only be working two days.

In Brooklyn alone, 20,000 to 30,000 people are usually hired to work at the polling places during the elections. If even one large district decided to report these poll workers as employees, the national numbers could be skewed.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/will_election_workers_skew_friday_MEqqwiA9I8tG6tNF5w42AP#ixzz11izGl5DQ

Well, I scored a 90.91%, 30 out of 33.

Nan G

democrat motto, if you can’t win, just cheat.

90.91% Didn’t know what FDR had threatened. I must have slept through that history class. I should have read #26 more carefully.

Hey, I take issue with #33. I think none of the 4 answers is strictly correct, but will say no more to avoid spoilers.

Woo hoo! As more tankers burn in Pakistan, the manchild hits the links for his 52nd golf day. Leading this country is a tough job….for someone, someday we will find out just who it is that is doing the leading, such as it is. 🙄

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/123511-obama-hits-links-for-52nd-golf-day

While most of you slept safe in your beds last night, America’s Second Greatest Generation was busy…

http://www.dvidshub.net/video/96909/operation-pakawul