I was struck a month ago by the incriminating statements put forth by Senator Chuck Hagel and CIA head Leon Panetta, which I highlighted on February 16th in Legalized Bribery. Those statements bluntly indict our massive system of lobbying, political fundraising, and the quality of those running for elected office! In light of that article, I am more and more convinced that our elected officials have turned their offices into massive for profit machines at the expense of our public well being.

I commend the authors of this report, Roger Weissman and James Donahue, for taking the time and making the extensive effort to expose the truth. The full report, 231 pages in length, spares no detail. In studying it, I found the information and analysis riveting. Let me try to summarize it for you.

The report chronicles in real detail how Wall Street showered Washington with $1.7 billion in campaign contributions and $3.4 billion upon lobbyists over the last ten years. That money went from the lowest members of Congress to the President of the United States. 55% of the contributions went to Republicans and 45% went to Democrats. Yes, a truly bipartisan effort.

The authors are beyond thorough in laying out how the . . .

financial sector showered campaign contributions on politicians from both parties, invested heavily in a legion of lobbyists, paid academics and think tanks to justify their preferred policy positions, and cultivated a pliant media — especially a cheerleading business media complex.

The report highlights the electricity crisis in California in 2000 and the Enron debacle as precursors of our current situation.

They quote FDR in his statement, “our enemies of today are the forces of privilege and greed within our own borders.” The same clearly holds true today.

Where were our leaders with the vision and foresight to protect the public? Feeding at the Wall Street trough!! Let’s review what the $5.1 billion bought Wall Street and who in Washington facilitated the process. Later I will highlight a number of politicians who collected substantial amounts of these dollars.

Part I : What Did the Money Buy?

1. the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which separated commercial and investment banking activities. This act came out of the Great Depression. Former Fed chair Paul Volker supported Glass-Steagall in the late 90’s and still does today. The expected repeal of this Act allowed for the merger of Citibank and Travelers Insurance even before the formal repeal. President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Congressman Phil Gramm, and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan were the primary supporters of this repeal.

2. the allowance of off-balance sheet accounting which promoted the increased leverage in banks.

3. the executive branch rejects financial derivative regulation. The CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Corp), led by Brooksley Born’s effort, sought to exert regulatory control over derivatives. The CFTC was squashed by Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan. Then Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told Congress that CFTC proposals would cast regulatory uncertainty over a thriving market. Aside from Rubin, Greenspan, and Summers, Senator Richard Lugar and SEC Chair Arthur Levitt also supported the Clinton administration’s lack of regulatory oversight.

4. Congress also blocked financial derivative regulation through legislation engineered by Senator Phil Gramm.

5. in 2004, the SEC succumbed to massive lobbying by Wall Street allowing for voluntary regulation. This acquiescence is the grossest example of the inmates running the asylum. In 1975, the SEC ruled that debt to net capital ratios had to be less than 12 to 1. This “voluntary regulation” led by Goldman Sachs and then CEO Henry Paulson allowed investment banks to develop their own net capital requirements. Merrill Lynch went to a 40:1 ratio. Then SEC chair Chris Cox acknowledged this voluntary regulation was a complete failure!

6. the bank self-regulation goes global.

7. the total failure to police the mortgage banking industry and its predatory lending. People may never have heard of outfits such as Aames Financial, Delta Funding, Ameriquest, Long Beach, and many more. These firms propagated massive frauds in lending to unqualified borrowers. They need to be brought to justice.

8. the federal government preempted a number of state consumer protection laws which would have mitigated a lot of the predatory lending.

9. the government allowed for purchasers of loans to escape accountability. Only the original mortgage lender would be liable for the predatory and illegal features embedded in the mortgages. This immunization of the investment banks eliminated their legal exposures and facilitated the continuation of fraudulent lending practices.

10. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expand their footprints into the non-prime mortgage market. Many politicians fed from the Freddie and Fannie troughs, but nobody more than Chris Dodd and Barack Obama.

11. the merger mania in the banking industry has led to institutions now deemed “too big to fail.” This report believes these institutions should now be treated like highly regulated public utilities.

12. the debacle that played out with the rating agencies only further facilitated this mess. These agencies were and still are massively conflicted.

Part II: Who Paid What and Who Collected How Much 1998-2008?

– Commercial Banks spent $154 million in campaign contributions and $383 million on lobbyists.

— Accounting Firms spent $81 million in campaign contributions and $122 million on lobbyists.

— Insurance Companies spent $220 million in campaign contributions and $1.1 billion on lobbyists!!

— Investment Banks spent $512 million in campaign contributions and $600 million on lobbyists.

A very large percentage of the lobbyists were former government officials!!

While the report makes a number of recommendations, a few strike me as self-evident and vitally necessary:

1. derivatives must be regulated.
2. limited leverage within financial institutions
3. revise the compensation system for financial institutions so timing of reward is linked to elimination of risk
4. consumer advocacy groups

The list of politicians receiving the largesse runs approximately 80 pages and covers the Presidency to seemingly every member of Congress. I was also struck by the consistency of contributions received during each election cycle by Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Dodd (D-CT). Schumer represents the Wall Street territory while Dodd has been a longtime senior ranking official on the Senate Banking committee.

As I perused the financial data specifically for 2008, I paused and reflected on the fact that these institutions were, and to a large extent still are in dire financial straits. While in the process of receiving government support, they had made or were making campaign contributions. As the government has haphazardly reviewed expenditures at these organizations, let’s shed the floodlight right back on these campaigns. It is not difficult to track campaign contributions to politicians back to taxpayer funds injected into these firms. In light of that, I know it will never happen but I believe the political campaigns should return those dollars to the public. Who received how much money in 2008? While not totally comprehensive, my back of the envelope analysis shows the following:

Barack Obama: $3.9 million
John McCain: $2.1 million
Hillary Clinton: $2.5 million
Rudolph Giuliani: $1.1 million
Chris Dodd: $650k
Mitt Romney: $1.060 million
Rham Emanuel: 160k

President Obama, Madame Secretary and gentlemen, please make those checks payable to “American Taxpayer” and let’s begin to return some integrity to our political process.

Where’s the media to shed light on this travesty? Oh yes, they are compliant and cheerleading.

Robert Rubin, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, Greenspan can,
Alan Greenspan, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, Paulson can,
Henry Paulson, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, Dodd can,
Chris Dodd, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, Gramm can,
Phil Gramm, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, Obama can…

Uh, oh!! We got real problems!!

LD

**Cross-posted from my blog, Sense on Cents. Come by and visit!

Ms. Dowd begins in her usual snide fashion:

Ask not, you know, what your country can, like, do for you. Ask what you, um, can, you know, do for your country.

After a lifetime of shying away from the public spotlight, Caroline Kennedy asked herself what she could do for her country.

Her soft-spoken answer — to follow her father and two uncles and serve in the Senate — got her ripped to shreds in the, you know, press.

I know about “you knows.” I use that verbal crutch myself, a bad habit that develops from shyness and reticence about public speaking.

Wow. That’s so nice of you, Mo, to first make fun of Caroline Kennedy’s crutch of saying ‘you know’ 120 times in one interview – only then to excuse it. This ignores the fact that Ms. Kennedy’s “you knows” may cover the fact that she doesn’t have very much that is pertinent to say otherwise. Mo then continues fawning:

I always thought that Caroline and her brother, John, had special magic capital in America because of their heartbreaking roles in the Kennedy House of Atreus.

… I found it bizarre that when Caroline offered to use her magic capital — and friendship with Barack Obama — to help take care of New York in this time of economic distress, she was blasted by a howl of “How dare she?”

How dare she indeed. Let me inquire of Ms. Dowd: how does Caroline’s “friendship” with Barack Obama or her magical Kennedy name enable her to magically help the beleaguered State of New York?

Is Ms. Dowd implying that if a Senator is not a ‘friend’ of Barack Obama, his or her state’s needs will be ignored? Surely, Hillary Clinton has done an amazing job for her constituents and earned their respect, despite the fact that the Bushes and Clintons are like oil and water. For one thing, Senator Clinton fought for and got better care for first responders after 9/11 when President Bush ignored their needs. She did it without the ‘magical friendship’ Ms. Dowd insists is so important. Furthermore, many in NY Congress as well as local representatives refused to abandon Hillary for Obama during the primary, though they were under great pressure to do so. They stuck with her for one reason: they each made clear, when they needed Hillary, she always showed up for their districts. Yet, Ms. Mo still treats Senator Clinton like a carpetbagger. How is it that Caroline is magically equipped, simply by virtue of the Kennedy name to rescue New York? Dowd then states:

Although Americans still have enough British in their genes to be drawn to dynasties, W. has no doubt soured the country on scions. And the camps of the other two New York dynasties — the Clintons (still bitter about Caroline’s endorsement of Obama) and the Cuomos (who’d like that Senate seat for Andrew) — have certainly done their best to undermine Caroline.

Who has undermined her? Ms. Kennedy has done a fine job of doing that for herself. And why shouldn’t NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo want the seat – he is also far more accomplished? What about Congresswoman Carol Maloney – probably Hillary’s pick? Why should the far more qualified woman once again be overlooked? Why do we seem hell bent for leather to promote “American Idol” in this country? What has happened to the American dream of working for and earning what you want in life? And why do we assume the Clintons are bitter about Caroline’s Obama endorsement? And what does that have to do with the fact that Congresswoman Maloney is more deserving and more qualified for this appointment in her sleep than Caroline Kennedy?

Sounds like Ms. Dowd is the one who is bitter. The Clintons are husband and wife. No dynasty there that I can see, but Mo still pulls out the same old, tired narrative of ‘no dynasties’ that Obama used so effectively when trumpeting his excuse for CHANGE. Um, except when the dynasty is “Kennedy” – then the sky’s the limit. Heaven forefend we have someone who has some idea what the hell they are doing. But since we just elected a President who hasn’t a clue, perhaps Ms. Dowd feels we should keep the trend going. Ms. Dowd refers to Caroline Kennedy as offering the Senate “an infusion of class, intelligence and guts.” Guts? Um, you know, yeah, err, aah, you know aaaaaaand….yeah.

“People complain that the 51-year-old Harvard and Columbia Law School grad and author is not a glib, professional pol who knows how to artfully market herself, and is someone who hasn’t spent her life glad-handing, backstabbing and logrolling. I say, thank God.”

Oh, Mo! You’re kidding me, right? And your beloved “Obambi” hasn’t spent his career glad-handing, backstabbing and logrolling??! Certainly, P.E. Obama hasn’t any idea how to “artfully market” himself, does he?

The press whines that she doesn’t have a pat answer about why she wants the job. I’ve interviewed a score of men running for president; not one had a good answer for why he wanted it.

Gee, does that include P.E. Obama – the one you touted this entire election season while excoriating the far more qualified, eloquent (sans teleprompter) and caring Hillary Clinton at every opportunity? I believe when Obama was asked the first thing he would do as President, he said he would “put his feet up behind the desk.” Awe inspiring.

Ms. Dowd then tells us Caroline’s relatively inarticulate and inexperienced manner is no worry, since she “knows Caroline Kennedy.”…

“She’s smart, cultivated, serious and unpretentious. The Senate, shamefully sparse on profiles in courage during Dick Cheney’s reign of terror, would be lucky to get her.

Anyhow, it isn’t how you say it. It’s what you say. Hillary Clinton is a great talker, but she never stood up in the Senate to lead a crusade against any Republican horror show, from Terri Schiavo to the Bush administration’s dishonest push to war.”

I see, but Barack Obama stood up to …???? Who exactly? What crusade did the inspiring speaker, Mr. Hopey-Changey lead? Who did Joe Biden stand up to? Or Kerry? Or any of them? Furthermore, P.E. Obama supposedly made an anti-war speech in 2002 and then when elected to the Senate in 2005, spent the rest of his time voting in lock step with his party and rubberstamping everything that President Bush wanted. Senator Clinton, gave her vote for the IWR in 2002 very reluctantly, as her speech on the Senate floor shows. The very next day she, along with Senator Robert Byrd, set about restricting George Bush further in terms of what powers this IWR would grant him.

Again, Hillary is being judged by a ridiculous double standard. Dowd actually has the nerve to criticize her for not being the lone Senator to stand up against Bush and his cadre but the man Dowd affectionately named “Obambi,” who never stood up to anyone, or for anything, gets a pass. Does she even realize or care how contradictory this nonsense is?

And if we are going to talk about Terry Schiavo – didn’t Obama vote to keep her alive?

What the hell is Mo Dowd going on about here? She seems to conveniently forget that very man she spent the last year fawning over is just as vapid and chameleon-like as they come. Moral courage? How about political expediency? That is the only term our President-to-be understands.

I find Dowd’s closing words most hilarious:

Sitting in the Senate gallery on Tuesday as senators were sworn in by Dick Cheney, I saw plenty of lawmakers who had benefited from family.

It isn’t what your name is. It’s what you do with it.

So dynasties are OK as long as you are a Kennedy. But Hillary Clinton, who Dowd predictably finds time to trash once again, had far more accomplishments on her own that Caroline Kennedy ever had, only got to her Senate seat and a run for the nomination because of her husband? I see. Ms. Dowd sounds more like Chris Matthews every day. Jealous much? Hillary Clinton has done a great deal with her name but her detractors still are determined to pretend her accomplishments are non-existent, probably to make Caroline look better by comparison. Sorry. Not working.

What exactly has Caroline Kennedy done that entitles her to jump to the head of the line in front of Carol Maloney and Andrew Cuomo?

It is far more likely that Ms. Dowd chooses to champion Caroline because she is sweet and non-threatening – no brilliance detected. Hillary surely is a far more intimidating character. I have nothing against Caroline Kennedy personally. The question in re Caroline Kennedy isn’t what’s wrong with her – it’s what’s right with her for this particular job? Out of nowhere, she crooks her finger to get a Senate seat and it should be granted her?

The rather clueless Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post also chimed in…

“Caroline has always been part of my consciousness: the lucky little girl with a pony and an impossibly handsome father. What a fitting coda … to have the little princess grow up to be a senator.”

So in order to have a “storybook ending,” let’s put a totally unqualified Kennedy in the seat. Marcus enjoyed giving Mr. Obama a storybook ending as well. For those who don’t remember, Marcus is also one who saw fit to trash Hillary Clinton endlessly.

So a qualified woman is to be vilified and held to impossible standards – but one with no qualifications for the job is to be nursed along at every turn? What kind of a message are we sending with this behavior? When we send a woman up who is unqualified and she falters, she makes it twice as hard for the truly qualified female candidate to be sent up the next time.

The bottom line is this: When we lower the bar to suit an unqualified woman, or a minority of either sex, you are making it that much more difficult for a qualified person in the same category. Unqualified men seem to get by with little consequences, however.

Ms. Dowd may excuse Ms. Kennedy’s ‘verbal crutch,’ but that does not excuse her lack of deserving or qualifications otherwise. It also doesn’t excuse the fact that women like Ms. Dowd and Ms. Marcus seem incapable of celebrating a truly qualified and capable woman like Hillary Clinton over a truly unqualified, dissembling man.

Richard Cohen’s sister is canceling her inauguration party because of President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to bless Mr. Obama’s taking the office of the Presidency of the United State.

According to her brother’s column in the Washington Post, what made her do this is the way in which Mr. Obama’s choice to pick this pastor for this occasion serves as a special sort of condoning of Mr. Warren’s views about gays and lesbians.

I agree with Richard Cohen, and apparently his sister, that these views should be regarded as totally unacceptable by anybody who has any sense of the importance of civil rights and indeed of human rights. I also agree with Richard Cohen’s view that as a somebody running for the office of President and who was at the time a U.S. Senator, Mr. Obama had a particular responsibility for denouncing his then-pastor’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for giving the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan a special award during the primary season.

I find it troubling that neither Mr. Cohen nor apparently his sister have not been, as far as I can tell, overly concerned by President-Elect Obama’s equally eloquent silence and inaction regarding the sexism and misogyny directed at Senator Clinton and her supporters, particularly the sophomoric expression of these attitudes by Jon Favreau, the man writing President-elect Obama’s inaugural address. (I shudder to think what the reaction of the Cohen family would have been if Favreau had been found on YouTube horsing around calling somebody a “homo” - maybe then Richard Cohen’s sister would join us in our demand that the President-Elect fire this sophomoric bigot as his chief speech-writer. Whether a bigot is slick (Warren) or juvenile (Favreau), he is still a bigot.)

It is tempting to forget in this sort of dynamic who the real problem is. As is clear from what I have written so far, I wish Richard Cohen and his sister would be, respectively, writing about and canceling inauguration parties as much over Mr. Obama’s inaction in the face of sexism and misogyny as they are in the face of anti-Semitism and gay-bashing. And yes, I wish that Richard Cohen’s sister had paid attention to and given greater weight to the fact that she had the option to work to elect somebody who, both as a Senator and as a Presidential candidate, repeatedly marched in Pride parades and met with editors of gay newspapers across the country rather than working for somebody who would not even have his photograph taken with Gavin Newsome.

But I am not falling into the trap that lies that way. Just because people got it wrong before does not mean they cannot help matters now. People can learn. So despite the bit of complaining above, I am not going to point a finger at Richard Cohen’s sister (or, for that matter, at Katha Pollitt for decrying the misogyny involved in the Warren choice when Pollitt, like Richard Cohen’s sister, opted to support Mr. Obama for the presidency when it was already obvious that he was complacent, to say the least, about sexism and misogyny). I am just pleased that they are starting to pay attention now and apparently coming to understand better who they voted for. To quote Richard Cohen: “The real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something.”

Aye, there’s the rub. During the primary season and the general election a friend of mine who spent some considerable amount of time listening to me lament the Democratic Party’s poor judgment in making then-Senator Obama their poster-child, kept saying to me that the real problem with Mr. Obama is that he is an “empty suit”.

That term seemed to me too tepid back then. But I have come to see it as the essential problem behind the problem of Mr. Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader, and possibly any kind of leader. To be a moral leader, to stand for something means that you have to fill out your suit, your office, your position. To be an “empty suit” is to be a person who cannot draw a line in the sand, precisely because you do not have an arm and hand within that suit to use to reach out and draw that line. To be an “empty suit” is to be devoid of the weightiness that real leadership requires, including the gravitas to admit to a mistake and change one’s position (drop the bigoted minister and lose the bigoted speechwriter; say you have been wrong to dig in your heels rather than listen to the concerns of so many of the people who worked so hard to elect you). To be an “empty suit” is to be a moral vacuum.

I refused to vote for John McCain for a number of reasons but among them was the fact that while I knew he had the capacity for moral leadership, I did not care for the directions toward which his moral commitments would lead my country. I refused to vote for Barack Obama because I knew he came up empty on the capacity for moral leadership.

In some ways, moral emptiness, especially in a President, is worse than moral wrong-headedness. The morally wrong-headed leader takes a stand, e.g. George W. Bush’s legitimization of torture, and one can rally people against the stand she or he takes. The morally empty leader takes no stand. Under these circumstances, her or his silences often allow people to forget that the blank that exists in lieu of a leader is the appropriate target of criticism. After all, it seems easier to go after people who actually do take stands (Rick Warren, for example) rather than the person who silently enables wrong-headed person to gain in stature. But this is sleight of hand. The real problem is the enabler, the person who allows the sophomoric sexist to put words in his mouth, the person who lets bigoted clerics and their churches affiliate with him.

So, to Richard Cohen’s sister and to Katha Pollitt, I say welcome to my party - the one that got lost in 2008, the one that expected moral leadership of a certain kind from a Democratic president. Now that you are here, I hope you can help me figure out what we are going to do with the empty suit about to occupy the Oval Office. If that empty suit thinks he can pick up sufficient evangelical money and votes in 2012, he is not going to listen to bloggers and op-ed columnists whose votes and followers he thinks he can replace with the support of the evangelicals, regardless of the detestable content of many of their views and some of their conduct. Personally, I do not think we can give the empty suit the sort of backbone necessary to resist the lure of that support. If we cannot give this empty suit some backbone, we need, as I have written before, to start figuring out how we can have a better candidate on offer in 2012. So to the people who are canceling their celebrations, may I suggest that they use the time and effort saved to start solving that problem. We need to coalesce now around somebody who can fight for a nomination by a major Party - probably the the Party formerly recognizable as the Democratic one - who is what Obama’s supporters hoped he would be and what I fear he is not.

“I take back nothing I have written about Barack and Michelle Obama. That said, I don’t want to see them destroyed or to fail. For the sake of our country I hope that Barack has a successful Presidency. While I am not happy he is in the big chair, it is what it is. I do not require anyone to bow down at the altar of Obama. But I also do not prohibit or ban folks who do. For me the beauty of America is our diversity. We have got to learn how to disagree without going into pure visceral hatred.”

and, “I simply point out the reality that he will be sworn in as President. And at that point we judge him by what he does and not what he was. Is that fair?”

Reading all the comments by all of you, and emails from my family and friends, I am still as perplexed as ever. How do we move forward? How do we hold the DNC accountable for all the crap they pulled this election cycle? How do we still hold Obama’s feet to the fire on his promises, and his policies, but hope for a positive outcome for our country?

How do we *move on* after suffering personal attacks, witnessed character assassinations on some of our favorite people, and witnessed the most vile sexist attacks on women across the country, (Hillary supporters were victims to many sexist attacks on blogs and in the media.) as well as on two leading women in our government. It was impossible for many to not take those attacks personally.

As angry as many of us are, or were, or will always be, I don’t think that anyone truly wants America to *fail*. Perhaps there still are those who want Obama’s presidency to fail, but a country as a whole? I don’t think anyone really wants that. They want justice. People, in my opinion, are feeling victimized, and want justice. Some are demanding justice.

But there are also people in this country who are truly worried, even scared. Their businesses are failing, their nest eggs are drying up, we are watching our banks and car companies fail. Healthcare is…well, you know. People are scared. And some people, whether they voted for Obama or not, are at a point where they are hoping for a successful four years - because they NEED it. It is serious. And people are scared and worried.

I read some comments in response to UBM, that it is easy for those who *won* to come and kiss and make up, or gloat. And that is true. They *won*. They are happy. They are moving on. But, many of us, are not there yet.

It is very similar to the 7 stages of grief. (and I don’t mean this in a joking way…I see very similar patterns. And I am sure I will get mocked for this, but I think it is important.) And I am not trying to reduce people’s feelings to a flow chart. I am trying to understand and deal.

People process differently. Some people deal, and move on. Some people grieve for long periods of time. Some people take things so personally, like they have been punched in the gut, others laugh things off.

But, I think it is a disservice to tell those who are feeling as if they are grieving from the past two years, to *get over it*. Larry or Susan are NOT doing that - but I do think it is happening, whether Obama supporters here, or on many of the sites I read. And I do think that some people are moving forward faster than others. People will *get over* it - if and when they are ready - and that may be never, for some.

Like I said in my first post after the 4th, I want to *feel good* about what had happened but I remember too much, and am still too angry. I still get pissed about things that happened. But, I want to try and get to a point where I am hopeful, and think that we can fix all that *ails us*. I do, I know that people are really truly worried, and truly are praying/hoping/wishing for change/help/relief - putting the *Obamamania* aside. (I would love to be excited about the prospect of Hillary as SoS, but after all the VP rigamoroll, I am hesitant to even ponder the possibilty. And I wasn’t sure if I could stomach the new round of attacks that were sure to come - talking to you Tweety and Hitchens!)

Just as important as Obama’s victory was to his 65M supporters, the damage and ridicule and attacks and stolen delegates and voter fraud and sexism was just as real to those who supported Hillary or McCain and Palin. Having spent two years, glued to my computer, writing and reading and absorbing all I could, it was very personal and very real.

I have said before, that from the moment I typed *I support Hillary* on the keyboard, I was attacked and called racist, stupid, voting for a vagina, an idiot, and worse. Perhaps I am a sensitive idiot, but I lost sleep and even was brought to tears a few times by the attacks (from people at HuffPo). But I never gave up. I left those types of sites, but I never gave up. It was my right to fight for Hillary, and I tried. So, for people to tell me it isn’t real, or that I should get over it, just don’t understand, or know me at all.

I think one of the worst things about this whole process is the shear lack of respect for *the other side* and for our choices, and now for our *feelings*. (I know, I know… mock away). Personally, from the moment I began this quest, Obama supporters destroyed any chance of civil exchange, where I was concerned. It was so bad, I found myself huddled with fellow Clinton supporters in a handful of sites, where trolls were somewhat limited. I read NQ daily, but didn’t comment much, just because I couldn’t take the personal attacks/trolls.

And I don’t understand why someone like Undercover Black Man (sorry, UBM but you are topical at the moment) intentionally sought out to mock PUMAs and ridicule those not supporting Obama. Isn’t backing your candidate of choice your right? Aren’t our opinions and thoughts just as valid as anyone’s? Why does the failure to conform and join the Hope Express result in charges of racism? I think civil debates on qualifications, experience, judgment and policies would have been so much more productive. I honestly feel that my attitudes towards Obama and the things I chose to write about and discuss suffered because of the attacks I had suffered from the get go, and then the actions of the DNC, and the atrocious media. I became a bitter, angry Obama hater. And that is not an easy thing to get over.

All I wanted to do was debate, and exchange ideas and information and learn some things, and be involved. I was so excited about the prospect of Hillary becoming President, something I had been waiting 12 years for. And then, having an African American, and a Hispanic in the mix was just *too cool*! But, instead of a *dream team* year, it became a nightmare.

But, I don’t want to live in this nightmare, and I don’t want to remain bitter and angry. I like being happy, and positive and I want our country to do well! (I would be MUCH happier if Hillary were Commander in Chief…) but it is not to be. No matter how pissed I am about it, how it became so, and the things that were done, it is what it is. Now, I just need to figure out how to take that anger and make positive changes. Whether that means campaigning against him in 4 years, or fighting alongside HLF and others to change the system, or voting out all those who supported Obama, and boycotting all those stations that we now hate, or sucking it up, and trying to do what I can to be positive, or whatever! I still haven’t figured it out.

We, as a country went through an enormous shock on 9/11, and since that time, we have gone to war, lost more than 4000 soldiers, suffered massive drops on the stock market, seen videos of terrorist threats, had the anthrax scares, seen rising costs in housing, gas, food and healthcare, our image has suffered around the world. And this election was very, very important to all of us here. Whether you voted Obama or Hillary, or McCain, it was very important for all of the reasons I listed, and more (Many AA Obama supporters had their own real reasons). We supported our candidate because of all that we have been through, and seen, and we felt that person to be the best to lead us through. It was personal, and it was real. (who knows, maybe the guys on the park benches DID vote for a reason…)

So, after reading all the hundreds of comments, my whole point was to demonstrate how, I believe, people are in a a sense going through the seven stages of grief. And it is a process that everyone needs to go through, at their own pace. (and I do not think the seventh stage - HOPE - means that you have to swallow the kool-aid, and worship at the feet of Obama, I just think it is a stage where we discover our own way to move forward, however that may be. I think I am feeling a little bit of stage four…)

So, I am not trying to preach, or tell people to get over it, or to act like I am some psychotherapist. My intent is to just let those *doubters* out there know, that for many of us, the feelings are deep and they are real.

1. SHOCK & DENIAL-
You will probably react to learning of the loss with numbed disbelief. You may deny the reality of the loss at some level, in order to avoid the pain. Shock provides emotional protection from being overwhelmed all at once. This may last for weeks.

2. PAIN & GUILT-
As the shock wears off, it is replaced with the suffering of unbelievable pain. Although excruciating and almost unbearable, it is important that you experience the pain fully, and not hide it, avoid it or escape from it with alcohol or drugs. You may have guilty feelings or remorse over things you did or didn’t do with your loved one. Life feels chaotic and scary during this phase.

3. ANGER & BARGAINING-
Frustration gives way to anger, and you may lash out and lay unwarranted blame for the death on someone else. Please try to control this, as permanent damage to your relationships may result. This is a time for the release of bottled up emotion. You may rail against fate, questioning “Why me?” You may also try to bargain in vain with the powers that be for a way out of your despair (”I will never drink again if you just bring him back”)

4. “DEPRESSION”, REFLECTION, LONELINESS-
Just when your friends may think you should be getting on with your life, a long period of sad reflection will likely overtake you. This is a normal stage of grief, so do not be “talked out of it” by well-meaning outsiders. Encouragement from others is not helpful to you during this stage of grieving. During this time, you finally realize the true magnitude of your loss, and it depresses you. You may isolate yourself on purpose, reflect on things you did with your lost one, and focus on memories of the past. You may sense feelings of emptiness or despair.

5. THE UPWARD TURN-
As you start to adjust to life without your dear one, your life becomes a little calmer and more organized. Your physical symptoms lessen, and your “depression” begins to lift slightly.

6. RECONSTRUCTION & WORKING THROUGH-
As you become more functional, your mind starts working again, and you will find yourself seeking realistic solutions to problems posed by life without your loved one. You will start to work on practical and financial problems and reconstructing yourself and your life without him or her.

7. ACCEPTANCE & HOPE-
During this, the last of the seven stages in this grief model, you learn to accept and deal with the reality of your situation. Acceptance does not necessarily mean instant happiness. Given the pain and turmoil you have experienced, you can never return to the carefree, untroubled YOU that existed before this tragedy. But you will find a way forward.

I also think this site has some similarities into how some people are feeling. I know I do. From Victim to Survivor, The Emotions of the Abuse Survivor.

I love debate. I love alternate thought. That is how I learn. As someone said, without alternative thought, we are an echo chamber. All I, *personally* wish, is that we are civil. I am not saying we can’t swear, I love swearing, dammit. But, rabid attacks are just crazy. I am even one who loves good conspiracy theories. I think they are sometimes fun….but that is just me. Heck, there is even room to learn while searching out theories…. I just wish the internet wasn’t so anonymous, and people discussed and debated as if they were in the same room together. (so, don’t get mad at NQ, this is just my own opinion.)

And, one other note… man, get me started and I never shut up… I want to thank NQ and the writers and Hill supporters here who were a gift this past year. I love ya, man! Thank goodness I found ya’ll!

Ok, let the mocking and/or debate begin. :O)
(I say mock, because I know how other sites like to point back at us, and mock…)

What if Bill or Hillary Clinton’s grandmother had died the day before the election? Let’s speculate.

Republicans would have flown back from campaigning to hold emergency hearings in both the House and Senate to “investigate”. The right wing and religious wackos would have crash produced an “educational” video adding the grandmother’s death to the Clinton Death List. Vince Foster’s bones would have been dug up and desecrated yet again. Servers around the world would have crashed and burned, unable to accomodate the outpouring of sewage published by “citizen journalists” on right wing blogs. The media would have “reported” every crackpot conspiracy theory, prefacing their “reports” with the words “some people say” or, just to add a dash of credibility, “sources say” — if by “sources” you mean commenters on the Free Republic . And then they would have voted to impeach all over again, throwing Hillary Clinton in for good measure. Meanwhile, Democrats would be busy polling to figure out what to do - all while allowing the train of sanity to go off the rails.

Just to make sure I make myself clear to those who interpret eveything they read literally, I AM NOT SUGGESTING that Obama deserves this treatment. I’m just marveling yet again at the insanity that gripped this country during the 8 years of the Clinton presidency, which rose again in all its hideous glory during Hillary Clinton’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

I’m still waiting for the Republicans, insane Clinton haters and their amen corner in the press corps to apologize for pissing away taxpayer dollars and squandering valuable airtime and ink on this public lunacy to return the money and issue a formal apology to the country for flushing their responsibility to the public down the commode.

Still waiting.

Still waiting.

Can I just say from the outset, no freakin’ DUH??? Like we didn’t already know this! Now, there is testimony to back up what we have been screaming from the top of our lungs: ACORN and Obama ARE CONNECTED. What does it take already? According to the article:

Acorn, the liberal “community organizing” group that claims it will deploy 15,000 get-out-the-vote workers on Election Day, can’t stay out of the news.

The FBI is investigating its voter registration efforts in several states, amid allegations that almost a third of the 1.3 million cards it turned in are invalid. And yesterday, a former employee of Acorn testified in a Pennsylvania state court that the group’s quality-control efforts were “minimal or nonexistent” and largely window dressing. Anita MonCrief also says that Acorn was given lists of potential donors by several Democratic presidential campaigns, including that of Barack Obama, to troll for contributions.

Glad to hear the FBI is getting involved in this now - I sure hope it isn’t too little, too late.

But you know that Obama is going to try and WORM (What Obama Really Meant) his way out of this, or just flat out lie, what has become his standard MO:

The Obama campaign denies it “has any ties” to Acorn, but Mr. Obama’s ties are extensive. In 1992 he headed a registration effort for Project Vote, an Acorn partner at the time. He did so well that he was made a top trainer for Acorn’s Chicago conferences. In 1995, he represented Acorn in a key case upholding the constitutionality of the new Motor Voter Act — the first law passed by the Clinton administration — which created the mandated, nationwide postcard voter registration system that Acorn workers are using to flood election offices with bogus registrations.

Ms. MonCrief testified that in November 2007 Project Vote development director Karyn Gillette told her she had direct contact with the Obama campaign and had obtained their donor lists. Ms. MonCrief also testified she was given a spreadsheet to use in cultivating Obama donors who had maxed out on donations to the candidate, but who could contribute to voter registration efforts. Project Vote calls the allegation “absolutely false.”

Huh - which one are you going to believe, Ms. Moncrief, or Ms. Gillette. Now wait, before you answer that question, consider this: Secretary of State in Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, and Karyn Gillette, have a major connection to each other. Yep - sure do. Turns out, according to Brunner’s husband, Rick, they even worked out of Gillette’s office. The plot thickens:

She (Moncrief) says that when she had trouble with what appeared to be duplicate names on the list, Ms. Gillette told her she would talk with the Obama campaign and get a better version. Ms. MonCrief has given me copies of the donor lists she says were obtained from other Democratic campaigns, as well as the 2004 DNC donor lists.

How pissed off are you right now? ACORN and Obama, along with OTHER Democratic campaigns, were sharing mailing lists. Privacy? What privacy? Get this:

In her testimony, Ms. MonCrief says she was upset by Acorn’s “Muscle for Money” program, which she said intimidated businesses Acorn opposed into paying “protection” money in the form of grants. Acorn’s Brian Kettering says the group only wants to change corporate behavior: “Acorn is proud of its corporate campaigns to stop abuses of working families.”

“Muscle for Money”??? Is this for real?? Well, holy crapydoo - that sure explains a whole helluva lot about how the Obama campaign and its minions have been operating, doesn’t it??

Here is the sad tale of Ms. Moncrief and ACORN, in the interest of full disclosure:

Ms. MonCrief, 29, never expected to testify in a case brought by the state’s Republican Party seeking the local Acorn affiliate’s voter registration lists. An idealistic graduate of the University of Alabama, she joined Project Vote in 2005 because she thought it was empowering poor people. A strategic consultant for Acorn and a development associate with its Project Vote voter registration affiliate, Ms. MonCrief sat in on policy-making meetings with the national staff. She was fired early this year over personal expenses she had put on the group’s credit card.

She says she became disillusioned because she saw that Acorn was run as the personal fiefdom of Wade Rathke, who founded the group in 1970 and ran it until he stepped down to take over its international operations this summer. Mr. Rathke’s departure as head of Acorn came after revelations he’d employed his brother Dale for a decade while keeping from almost all of Acorn’s board members the fact that Dale had embezzled over $1 million from the group a decade ago. (The embezzlement was confirmed to me by an Acorn official.)

INTERNATIONAL??? Oh, dear. That is scary as all get out. Anyway, I guess Obama was inspired by Rathke to be Ruler of the Universe, commander of all he sees. And taking something that doesn’t belong to him? Well, heckfire, that seems to be Obama’s MO, too - caucuses, votes, whatever…

Then there is the vindictiveness Obama has demonstrated time and time again:

“Anyone who questioned what was going on was viewed as the enemy,” Ms. MonCrief told me. “Just like the mob, no one leaves Acorn happily.” She believes the organization does some good but hopes its current leadership is replaced. She may not be alone.

Just like the mob.

And here is some information I think Joe the Plumber could certainly use given what the Obama camp and its minions in Ohio have done to him:

Last August two of Acorn’s eight dissident board members, Marcel Reed and Karen Inman, filed suit demanding access to financial records of Citizens Consulting Inc., the umbrella group through which most of Acorn’s money flows. Ms. Inman told a news conference this month Mr. Rathke still exercises power over CCI and Acorn against the board’s wishes. Bertha Lewis, the interim head of Acorn, told me Mr. Rathke has no ties to Acorn and that the dissident board members were “obsessed” and “confused.”

According to public records, the IRS filed three tax liens totaling almost $1 million against Acorn this spring. Also this spring, CCI was paid $832,000 by the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote efforts in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as “staging, sound, lighting,” only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.

“Acorn needs a full forensic audit,” Ms. MonCrief says, though she doesn’t think that’s likely. “Everyone wants to paper things over until later,” she says. “But it may be too late to reform Acorn then.” She strongly supports Barack Obama and hopes his allies can be helpful in cleaning up the group “after the heat of the election is gone.”

Let’s see - a private citizen has his fairly insignificant lien posted all over the airwaves, but ACORN’s $1 million lien?? Um, not so much.

Naturally, this is all a blatant attempt by right-wing loonies to cast aspersions on this fine organization right before an election:

Acorn’s Mr. Kettering says the GOP lawsuit “is designed to suppress legitimate voters,” and he says Ms. MonCrief isn’t credible, given that she was fired for cause. Ms. MonCrief admits that she left after she began paying back some $3,000 in personal expenses she charged on an Acorn credit card. “I was very sorry, and I was paying it back,” she says, but “suddenly Acorn decided that . . . I had to go. Since then I have gotten warnings to ‘back off’ from people at Acorn.”

Acorn insists it operates with strict quality controls, turning in, as required by law, all registration forms “even if the name on them was Donald Duck,” as Wade Rathke told me two years ago. Acorn whistleblowers tell a different story.

Oh, you knew it was coming - this is ALL about voter suppression, not voter fraud! Racists!!! Ahem.

Oh, but it isn’t just Ms. Moncrief who feels compelled to finally tell the truth:

“There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” says Nate Toler, who worked until 2006 as the head organizer of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in California. And Ms. MonCrief says it is longstanding practice to blame bogus registrations on lower-level employees who then often face criminal charges, a practice she says Acorn internally calls “throwing folks under the bus.”

Gregory Hall, a former Acorn employee, says he was told on his very first day in 2006 to engage in deceptive fund-raising tactics. Mr. Hall has founded a group called Speaking Truth to Power to push for a full airing of Acorn’s problems “so the group can heal itself from within.”

Well, I’ll be damned. Seems that ACORN has a bit of a history in shenanigans. What I particularly love is how they Higher-Ups blame EVERYTHING on the underlings. Just what we can look forward to with an Obama presidency, I predict!

Oh, and do I even have to add this? You coulda guessed it:

To date, Mr. Obama has declined to criticize Acorn, telling reporters this month he is happy with his own get-out-the-vote efforts and that “we don’t need Acorn’s help.” That may be true. But there is no denying his ties with Acorn helped turbocharge his political career.

Seriously? You aren’t counting on all of those fraudulent votes for you in OH, CA, IN, TX, FL, NC, and the list goes on, at LEAST 15 states (16, if you include SC, which is already investigating ACORN)? Yeah, okay. Well, you may claim you don’t need ACORN, and ACORN may claim it is “non-partisan,” but judging from the video below, I think you are both lying - again:

Hopefully, more whistle blowers will come forward. Probably not in time to save this election from ACORN’s influence, but at the very least, to save more of our taxpaying dollars from going to these bozos in the future. Our vote is precious, and not to be trifled with by those who seek to distort it. We must stand up to these kinds of influences, and we sure as hell should not be paying for it.

And one more time, because of all of the documented fraudulent activities of ACORN, if you see something suspicious at your polling place, you can call: 866-976-VOTE to report it.

This is one of the community organizing groups into which the Democrats tried to funnel billions of dollars in the first draft designed to capture the 700 billion pound gorilla. Read this and understand why that little treat was considered nearly criminal by even the casual observers.

First. Obama claimed he has no ties to “a group he did some legal work for” back in 1995. Let’s look into that claim.

• In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud. A young lawyer named Barak Obama, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of ACORN and won. ACORN later invited Obama to train its staff on voter registration drives.
• In 1996 Obama ran for Illinois State Senate and ACORN became his precinct organization, identifying and turning out the vote.
• When Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago, the Fund frequently gave ACORN grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.
• In 2004 ACORN operates as Obama’s precinct organization in his run for the U.S. Senate.
• In 2007 ACORN’s national political arm endorsed Obama for president, and its “nonpartisan” voter registration affiliate starts registering hundreds of thousands of voters for Obama.
• Obama claims he has no ties to “a group he once did some legal work for.”
• In July 2008 the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, along with NoQuarter researchers, exposes the lie by uncovering $832,598.29 that the Obama campaign funneled through a front company called Citizens Services, Inc.
• ACORN, which receives partial taxpayer funding, used those funds to conduct solicitations for contributions to and raised over $800,000 for Obama in Philadelphia alone.

Where does ACORN, the political group get this money? In 2006 Project Vote hired ACORN and CSI as its highest paid contractors, paying ACORN $4,649,037 and CSI $779,016. It has also been well documented that money flows to them from various sources including from the federally chartered non-profit ACORN Housing Corporation, as you will see below.

Now, on to Nancy’s article.

Picture courtesy of Bud White. ACORN protesters, protesting “predatory lending”. How ironic!

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), with a smattering of Obama and ACORN thrown in to the mix assisted in the creation of the subprime housing saga. The saga led to the governmental take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Obama tries to omit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, confuses them and turns grey while discussing the bailout. Obama “obviously” has no idea who Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are but I digress.

There is still more from another group, Consumer Rights League (CRL), who appeared as supporting evidence in an earlier NoQuarter story, Obama’s Acorn: A Leftist Social Reform Group. Part II who has done extensive research on the ACORN Housing Corporation. Consumer Right’s League’s research is chronicled in the following paper, ACORN’s Hypocritical House of Cards: How One “Community” Group Helped the Housing Crisis Harm Taxpayers. Read about that <a href=”here.

Mr. James Terry recently appeared on Fox News discussing the fact that ACORN will benefit from the current bailout bill. ACORN did not respond to calls from Fox News. Mr. James Terry:

From their report:

This report focuses on the troubling record of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and its tax-exempt offshoot, the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC). The ACORN/AHC version of consumer advocacy has consisted of a three-decade assault on free enterprise and a history of extracting resources from financial lenders seeking abatement of ACORN’s public relations assaults. Specifically, this report examines ACORN’s impact on the housing problem. Documents provided by internal whistleblowers,
cross-checked with public records and recorded events, expose hypocritical lending recommendations tied to ACORN Housing Corporation’s agreements with major banks—agreements that end up harming consumers.
Media reports, combined with information provided by former ACORN employees, show that:

• ACORN leveraged the Community Reinvestment Act in order to
attack lenders’ reputations and secure financial resources for itself;
it has also endorsed loans offered by companies that fund ACORN
operations
• ACORN’s decades of lobbying and publicity seeking have contributed
to the current housing crisis by lowering lending standards
• Despite raking in a troubling 40 percent of its revenue from taxpayers
over the last three years, ACORN Housing Corporation’s actions
range from controversial to borderline illegal (This summer when Bush signed the current housing bill into law, he effectively gave ACORN and ACORN Housing Corporation a portion of upwards of $600 million dollars. There is no firewall between ACORN and AHC so the money for housing also supports the the political arm….Project Vote. Read more on that here from the Wall Street Journal.)
• AHC has worked to obtain mortgages for undocumented
workers
• AHC relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money
that may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service
• ACORN’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic”
loans, but AHC has recommended ten-year interest-only
loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and reverse mortgages
(which can be detrimental to senior citizens)
• AHC may have violated federal law by failing to maintain a
proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and
the aggressive political activities of ACORN

More About ACORN and ACORN Housing Corporation from CRL’s report:

To understand the current subprime credit mess is to glimpse a world in which a politically active organization with a non-profit housing arm reaps millions of dollars through “rent seeking” or manipulation of favorable laws. ACORN and its non-profit housing arm have taken in millions of taxpayer and corporate dollars by abusing a three-decade-old law intended to help the poor obtain housing. For decades, the activist organization known as ACORN has grabbed headlines—and cash—by attacking mortgage lenders in the name of citizens’ rights. Considerably less attention has been paid to the amount of taxpayer money that funds ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) and to the financial rewards ACORN has amassed

The troubling thing about ACORN,

it does not claim federal tax exemption, therefore it is free to engage in politics and is not required to disclose details of its vast and varied financial operations. Their membership includes more than 350,000 families, in more than half dozen countries.

According to CRL’s report, ACORN has a business model that is repeated over and over again, each time targeting a different company or financial institution. Here is that model:

Issues—–>Target—–>Direct Actions—–>Victory——>Partnership—–>$$$$ For Organizing

This information is provided by Former ACORN Organizer and University of Georgia Professor Fred Brooks.

CRL really did their homework and was able to retrieve information on the funding ACORN receives from financial institutions through whistleblowers (former employees) and public records. Some of the whistleblowers provided CRL with internal e-mails. Here are some of those figures:

In addition to the millions of taxpayer dollars AHC has taken in, one of
the organization’s tax returns shows private donations of more than $4 million
from major banks.6 Whistleblower documents covering AHC’s revenue
sources from July 1, 2004 through June 31, 2005 included:

• ACORN (Citibank Partnership)………………………….$127,500
• ACORN (Citibank Partnership)………………………….$240,000
• ACORN (Freddie Mac)……………………………………….$35,000
• Ameriquest Mortgage…………………………………………$130,000
• Fannie Mae (for Broadband)…………………………………$20,000
• Fannie Mae FYE 2005–2006………………………………$100,000
• JP Morgan Chase 2005–2006…………………………..$1,000,000
• Bank of America 2005–2006……………………………$1,390,000
• Washington Mutual…………………………………………..$175,000
• M & T Bank…………………………………………………….$150,000
• United Way (American Dream)……………………………..$15,000

Why should banks pay without a fight? Banks according to CRL, “look at it as a cost of doing business.” It seems that ACORN forces banks to see it as doing business….according to an internal statement that CRL retrieved.

ACORN does have a historical place in the current home crisis. Here is more on that, ACORN:

…has become both a leading beneficiary and an important advocate of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Three decades ago politicians, spurred by activist groups, found that banks were engaging in “redlining” refusing loans in areas with high concentrations of individuals with low credit scores. Legislators passed a bill that gave community groups significant sway over bank mergers based on the banks’ record of lending to minorities and the poor. The fact that poor credit put such borrowers at higher risk for default was deemed irrelevant. ACORN and AHC have taken advantage of that 1977 bill and have aggressively argued— since at least 1991—for its continuation. Given ACORN’s reliance on AHC to funnel federal funds for “mortgage counseling,” such support is hardly surprising.

It is important that we understand the Community Reinvestment Act, its passage and who it was passed under.

The Community Reinvestment Act or (CRA) was passed in 1977 under President Jimmy Carter. Take the time to watch the following video. It explains Obama, his advisers, foreclosures, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 and their connections to the subprime mortgage loans:

The CRA’s purpose is:

to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound banking operations. It was enacted by the Congress in 1977 (12 U.S.C. 2901) and is implemented by Regulations 12 CFR parts 25, 228, 345, and 563e. (See Regulation).

Furthermore there are reports that must be checked periodically:

# The CRA requires that each insured depository institution’s record in helping meet the credit needs of its entire community be evaluated periodically. That record is taken into account in considering an institution’s application for deposit facilities, including mergers and acquisitions. (See CRA Ratings) CRA examinations (see Exam Schedules) are conducted by the federal agencies that are responsible for supervising depository institutions: the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).

According to Thomas J. DiLorenzo in The Government-Created Subprime Mortgage Meltdown,

The original lobbyists for the CRA were the hardcore leftists who supported the Carter administration and were often rewarded for their support with government grants and programs like the CRA that they benefited from. These included various “neighborhood organizations,” as they like to call themselves, such as “ACORN” (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). These organizations claim that over $1 trillion in CRA loans have been made, although no one seems to know the magnitude with much certainty. A U.S. Senate Banking Committee staffer told me about ten years ago that at least $100 billion in such loans had been made in the first twenty years of the Act.

DiLorenzo explains the Catch-22 that these “community” banks find themselves in as a result of this 30 year old law:

Banks have been placed in a Catch 22 situation by the CRA: If they comply, they know they will have to suffer from more loan defaults. If they don’t comply, they face financial penalties and, worse yet, their business plans for mergers, branch expansions, etc. can be blocked by CRA protesters, which can cost a large corporation like Bank of America billions of dollars. Like most businesses, they have largely buckled under and have surrendered to their bureaucratic masters.

Consequently, banks in every community in America have been forced to hold a portfolio of bad loans, euphemistically referred to as “subprime” loans. In order to compensate themselves for the added risk of extending these loans, many lenders have increased the lending fees associated with mortgage loans. This is simply an indirect way of doing what banks always do – and what they must do to remain solvent: charging effectively higher rates of interest on riskier loans.

DiLorenzo has more to say on this “predatory lending”:

Then groups like ACORN call these loans discriminatory forcing the banks into making loans that they ultimately have no protection from. Thus, if one browses the ACORN web site, one can read of their boasts of having “predatory lending laws” passed in numerous states which outlaw such fees, prohibiting banks from protecting themselves from the added risk involved in making forced loans to “subprime” borrowers.

Of course it doesn’t end there. Banks are constantly threatened with fines if they do not comply with the requirements of the CRA. See how the Democrats have been forcing the issue lately. Investors.com wrote about this very subject:

Only, the risk-taking was her idea (Rep. Nancy Pelosi) — and the idea of all the other Democrats, along with a handful of Republicans, who over the past 30 years have demonized lenders as racist and passed regulation after regulation pressuring them to make more loans to unqualified borrowers in the name of diversity.

They were the ones who screamed — “REDLINING!” — and sent banks scurrying for cover in low-income neighborhoods, where they have been forced to lower long-held industry standards for judging creditworthiness to make the subprime loans.

If they don’t comply, they are threatened with stiff penalties under the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA, a law that forces banks to make home loans to people with poor credit risks.

Banks are required to keep up good ratings or mergers and other transactions can be blocked by the federal government. The CRA grew enormous during the Clinton era, with the many amendments that were added raising the amount of home loans to otherwise unqualified low-income borrowers. There were other problems associated with these amendments. This is exactly where Obama and ACORN enter the scene.

In February 2008, in The New York Post, economics professor Stan Liebowitz of the University of Texas at Dallas suggested:

At the crisis’ core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards—no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment … From the current hand-wringing, you’d think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards—at the behest of community groups and “progressive” political forces.

Liebowitz further pointed to ACORN’s role in the current housing “crisis” and to current advertisements ighlighting its role in procuring loans without using credit scores, 100-percent financed loans, and acceptance of undocumented income.

ACORN was responsible for issuing mortgages via CRA with little or no paperwork. They were also known as NINJAs….It stands for No Income, No Job, No Assets. These loans were still available in February of this year.

More from a New York Times, 1992 article, Fading Red Line; A special report; New Hope in Inner Cities: Banks Offering Mortgages:

ACORN’s longtime housing leader, Michael Shea, admitted that banks would not have adopted ultimately harmful policies “if there was no community pressure and the law,” but
that those factors made “a lot of bankers see it’s in their self-interest.”

That self interest— ACORN’s and modern banks’—made possible the extension of cheap credit to risky borrowers and has led directly to the modern subprime mess. It’s important to note, as the Times did, that in this campaign there were “many such voices. But by far the loudest belongs to Acorn…”

Of course not all financing for ACORN comes from financial institutions, a good deal of their financing comes from the American taxpayer in the form of grants and contracts because they are AHC is tax exempt. And CRL says this how AHC’s finances breakdown:

Two out of every five dollars AHC takes in come from taxpayer coffers.

Since so much money they raise comes from taxpayers, don’t you think ACORN should be doing good works? They may have some good work in the past, in recent years, not all of their works have been helpful to their clients or good use of taxpayer money. Here are some things they have been doing:

• Poor service to some of its vulnerable clients
• Potential staff lapses allowing HUD fraud

• Controversial collaborations assisting undocumented
workers in obtaining mortgages

• Assistance to borrowers using “under the table”
undocumented income in loan applications

• Ironic (if not hypocritical) recommendations
for exotic loans

• Possible violations of federal law through
failure to maintain a distinction between
the activities of AHC and those of the very
political ACORN

Consumer Rights League has received many internal e-mails via whistleblowers as I said earlier. CRL has more information about ACORN’s questionable loan documentation. CRL discusses that more:

Of specific concern is ACORN’s agreement to provide letters of “undocumented income” to Bank of America.According to a 2005 internal ACORN e-mail, that bank “pays ¼ of $1,300,000 each quarter.”Another pre-2007 ACORN document instructs its staff:

Undocumented income is a feature that allows ACORN Housing counselors to capture the applicant(s) total household income. Primarily observed in minority and immigrant communities, this type of income is not reported to the IRS and is also known as under-the-table.

As we can see ACORN and ACORN Housing Corporation are both quite closely connected. Not only are they connected to each other but pretty closely related to the current housing crisis. In light of the Washington Mutual collapse and the federal government taking over Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae, it is important to note that ACORN had their fingers in those “honey pots” too. One more mortgage company that ACORN played business with that went down was Ameriquest Mortgage highlighted in the following article, Latest Ameriquest Speculation: Citigroup, Morgan Stanley.

I am left with three questions. How many more financial institutions will suffer at ACORN’s hand? How many companies will be bailed out that are in bed with ACORN? And how much money will ACORN receive in the form of funds from the bailout? See more on the bailout, ACORN-NUTS!- at TheCorner at National Review Online (NRO).

CRL has a very interesting conclusion to their research. I will let CRL conclude my article for me. Here is their conclusion:

ACORN’s long history of abusing the public’s trust seems to have continued through the housing bubble. Its advocacy for loose credit played a role in the current subprime mess. Its advocacy of exotic loans calls into question the wisdom of giving taxpayer money to the organization. And its record of inappropriate ties between a non-profit that receives government funding and a political organization may violate federal laws. Congressional leaders should be wary of donating hard-earned tax dollars to a group with this sordid record. At a minimum, a Congressional investigation is warranted.

“Hillary took to the floor of the Senate today to lay out her plan for halting the economic meltdown, and her Senate staff has the video of her speech up online. … [L]isten to what she’s got to say. She’s speaking about what needs to be done NOW to address the economic meltdown taking place up on Wall Street this week. She talks in detail for over 20 minutes and dammit, it just breaks my heart that someone this capable and brilliant isn’t headed to the White House this fall.”

COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Ricki Lieberman and Ann, a No Quarter reader, strongly suggest you compare the video that NancyA has posted below with, ahem, Barack Obama’s video on “solving our financial crisis.” Obama urges everyone to “watch the ad and share it with everyone you know.” Uh, Barack, I think we’ll be sharing Hillary’s video that NancyA put up below.

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NANCYA’s post: While Senators John McCain and Barack Obama were auditioning for who could best handle a national economic emergency, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton released the following statement from her office in Washington, DC. As usual Senator Clinton understands the dangers of this “once in a century” crisis. She calls it “the greatest market upheaval since the Great Depression”. She did the following:

…called for swift and strong action to stem the growing credit crisis on Wall Street. Assailing the Bush Administration for ignoring repeated warnings of the growing crisis and failing to provide adequate oversight of an increasingly complicated market, Senator Clinton offered a series of bold, specific proposals, including creating a new version of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) to restore confidence in the market, curbing the most damaging and manipulative trading practices, providing relief to homeowners facing foreclosure, and reasserting competent federal oversight.

She outlined several proposals. Here is a list of her proposals:

* Create a new entity to buy up and quarantine toxic mortgage securities that are dragging down the markets which would allow the markets to stabilize. Last spring Senator Clinton was among the first to call for a new entity modeled after the successful Depression-era Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) or the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) created after the Savings and Loan crisis.

In response, Senator Clinton outlined a series of proposals to address the crisis, a crisis she warned about during the primary:

* Place a temporary moratorium on the most abusive stock transactions, many of which involve the “short-selling” of stocks. Yesterday, Senator Clinton wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission urging such a moratorium, saying it would provide breathing room for the markets to recover, for investors to make accurate assessments of companies and for regulators to assess what trading practices should be permanently banned.

* Convene an emergency economic summit to show the American people their government is working together. Bringing together leaders in the administration and Congress with lenders, consumer advocates, non profits, financial institutions, and all stakeholders will allow a coordinated response to the crisis.

* Aggressively pursue and encourage mortgage modifications. Senator Clinton has introduced legislation to remove barriers to mortgage modification and to encourage lenders to voluntarily work with borrowers to keep them current on payments and in their homes.

* Restore competent federal oversight of the increasingly complicated financial markets. The rapid evolution of the securities and banking industry overwhelmed the current regulatory framework, resulting in a “shadow banking system” that operates outside of oversight and without accountability.

* Require transparency and accountability on executive pay. Senator Clinton has proposed the Corporate Executive Compensation Accountability and Transparency Act to impose new transparency rules on executive pay, end the accounting techniques that hide compensation, and provide shareholders a say in executive compensation packages.

* Ensure the accountability of financial institutions borrowing money from the Federal Reserve’s new lending facilities. Taxpayers deserve to know that the companies they are bailing out are on the road to recovery and aren’t throwing more good money after bad.

Here is video of her remarks to the Senate yesterday:

The transcript of Senator Clinton’s remarks follows.

Senator Clinton: Thank You, Mr. President. We have seen the financial landscape in our country reshaped over night. The titans of Wall Street have been rendered insolvent or even bankrupt. These are firms that survived the Great Depression, World Wars, the attacks of September 11th, but were no match for a mounting credit crisis allowed to escalate in the shadows of our financial system. The Federal Government has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bear Stearns had to be rescued by J.P. Morgan Chase after the federal government guaranteed J.P. Morgan’s investment. And while they’re in talks to keep part of the company viable, Lehman Brothers has declared the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Merrill Lynch has been purchased by Bank of America and the Federal Government has agreed to rescue AIG. This past Monday we saw the largest drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 9/11. Now even money market funds are affected. For only the second time in our history, one has been valued at less than 100 cents on the dollar. Alan Greenspan has called this a once-in-a-century event. In my state of New York, tens of thousands of hard-working employees have lost their jobs. And the livelihoods of tens of thousands more who depend on Wall Street’s economy are threatened as well.

New York City and New York State, already facing serious economic and fiscal challenges, will now be forced to contend with a battered Wall Street, the lifeblood of our state’s economy. And the sudden collapse of these firms and the government takeover of some have shaken our markets and buffeted the economy as a whole.

Many are now asking, What’s next?

I know that New Yorkers and Americans are deeply concerned and more than a little bewildered. As our markets have grown more complex and interconnected globally, so too have the crises that have emerged. And we are still sorting out the details.

One of the consequences of the secrecy and lack of oversight under the Bush Administration is that we do not know what we do not know. But it is important to recognize what we do know about what went wrong so that we can assess what needs to be done right now to make it right.

What we have seen over the course of the last eight years is an administration that refused to recognize the threats lurking in our economy, no matter what lurked just beneath the surface or what problems were facing middle class families.

Now, we know that many CEO’s are paying lower tax rates than their receptionists. We know that President Bush and those who carry his mantle seek to lower those taxes even further. Middle class families have seen their wages decline even as the cost of living has skyrocketed. This administration has the worst job creation record in 70 years. Millions of families were locked into ballooning and unaffordable adjustable-rate loans as this administration stood by denying there was a crisis. Regulators and regulations designed to keep pace with the markets have been steadily chipped away by Washington Republicans even as companies experimented to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in ever more complex and risky financial instruments.

Now, we were reassured that the risk was too diversified and investments too sophisticated to put our economy in jeopardy. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, the cracks were showing as the value of mortgage-based securities slipped day by day by day. And the President and his supporters in Congress repeatedly chanted – and still chant the mantra today – that the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

The administration waxed philosophical when middle class families started facing foreclosures at record levels. The administration and their allies derided my proposals over the last two years to offer assistance to troubled homeowners seeking refinancing as a bailout. They dismissed my concerns and the concerns of millions of Americans even as the storm clouds gathered. They said they didn’t believe the government should intervene and provide borrowers an affordable opportunity to avoid foreclosure. Even when I and others warned the Bush Administration repeatedly from the start of this crisis that decisive action was demanded immediately to help families stay in their homes, that that was the best way to stave off a deepening economic crisis, their only responses were predictions for a soft landing and that the crisis could be contained.

Well, as I traveled throughout our country, I could see that no soft landing was forthcoming.

Many families, hundreds and even thousands of miles from Wall Street, were having their lives turned upside-down by the home mortgage crisis, and the ripple effects being felt throughout the economy, as a consequence of the broken economic policies of the last eight years.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration waited until this past summer to admit that massive housing relief was necessary. The administration finally supported in concept much of what I had proposed: mortgage modifications, freezes for unreasonable mortgage rate increases, and an expanded role for the Federal Housing authority.

But their response was half-hearted, without adequate resources or a commitment to enforcement. And so the home mortgage crisis slowly but surely eroded the value of risky debt instruments upon which Wall Street firms were depending. The house of houses of cards began to fall. My proposals, as well as those of others, were greeted as too much, too soon. Now we are forced to reckon with too little, too late.

When giant Wall Street firms revealed their dire straits and turned to this administration for the exact same help as we had sought for middle-class families — discounted loans, loan modifications and government-backed lending to weather the storm, Adam Smith was nowhere in sight.

Taxpayers have loaned these banks upwards of half a trillion dollars. And after years of laissez-faire policies for the middle class, the Bush Administration has acted on behalf of Wall Street with the largest and most significant federal interventions in the history of our modern financial system. The largest banks in the world can have closed-door meetings with the White House and the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department to discuss their bailout options, but millions of homeowners with mortgages worth more than their homes, or who are facing default and foreclosure, don’t have the same opportunity.

And this administration seems to be once again paralyzed.

Now, I represent both the workers and the homeowners and the investment firms. I wish we had taken action long before this for the sake of all of my constituents, but now we must have a concerted, focused effort. I don’t believe we can wait until the next president. I am extremely hopeful and optimistic that we will have a president who will work with us to resolve our economic challenges, but I don’t think we can wait.

However, I do believe we can avoid a deepening crisis. We can take steps right now to address the root causes of what is taking place in our economy to stem the tide of foreclosures and mortgage defaults and the aggregating consequences in the credit markets on Wall Street and throughout the global economy.

But we must cast aside the haphazard, half-hearted approach of this administration and bring every stakeholder to the table to seek out and implement the right solutions. We must be as vigilant on behalf of homeowners and middle class families as we are on behalf of Wall Street firms. We must chart a new course based on the facts at hand, not the ideology at work for eight long years. We’ve tried being reactive. It’s time now to be decisive.

No options should be off the fable, certainly not because they don’t fit into a narrow ideological prism that this administration abandoned — for some — at the first signs of trouble. Ideologues in Washington or in the market who thought that the only danger to the marketplace was the Federal Government are now going hat in hand to that same government seeking help to stay afloat.

So to those who suggest that the steps taken thus far are enough, let me be clear: we may need to take even more significant steps to avoid a self-sustaining cycle of depressed home prices and foreclosures with the consequent effects on the entire marketplace.

We’ve already pumped hundreds of billions of dollars of liquidity into the markets but we still cannot see the end of this crisis. The biggest problem now is that our entire financial market is anchored down by the mortgage securities that are untouchable. We’ve seen the banks and the financial institutions that had the largest exposures to these instruments among the first to fail. But now we’ve begun to see some of the mightiest institutions, even those making a profit, fall by the wayside, the market thrown into upheaval, and others the target of predatory short sellers.

The Federal Reserve has used virtually every arrow in its quiver, from rate cuts, opening its lending windows and in desperation has even created some new arrows through its new lending facilities. By some estimates, the Fed has put out more than a half a trillion dollars through discounted loans, bailouts and takeovers to stabilize the market and the economy. While necessary to prevent even deeper disaster, we’ve seen that the benefits of these actions have had limited effects.

This situation reminds me of that old fable, where people are standing by the side of a river and they keep seeing babies being rushed down the river in the current and they desperately reach out trying to save as many babies as possible. Day after day they’re reaching out. They get new tools, they build a bridge, they get a ladder, they’re constantly trying to get to those babies. They’re hoping that they can save as many, until finally somebody walks up and says, “Who’s throwing them in? Go upriver, find out what the real problem is and stop that!”

The real problem has always been the way our home mortgage system got totally out of whack with new kinds of instruments that were sold many times over with very little regard to the realities of life, human nature, and the inevitable ups and downs in the economy, with the results that until we reach in and fix the home mortgage crisis, we can bail out everybody from here till kingdom come, we will not get a handle on this economic crisis.

So here’s what I believe we should do.

First, in light of historic bank failures, even with the largest federal intervention in the history of the mortgage market, we need a government entity, a modern-day Homeowners Loan Corporation, referred to as HOLC — H-O-L-C — or we need to build on the Resolution Trust Corporation created to help deal with the Savings and Loan Crisis.

Now, I personally believe and was among the very first to suggest that a HOLC, a Homeowners Loan Corporation, could be a preferable way of unfreezing and beginning to fix our struggling mortgage market. Some of my colleagues and many other respected economists and government officials have called for the creation of an entity like the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was created after the Savings and Loan crisis to liquidate in an orderly way the virtually worthless assets that the failed S&L’s held.

Just yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Paul Volker, and Eugene Ludwig and Nicholas Brady made such a proposal. They said a HOLC, an RTC, we’ve got to come up with an entity that will assume these debts and burdens and begin to work our way out.

Last spring when I called for a modern version of the HOLC, that’s the Depression-era entity that bought up old mortgages and issued new, more affordable ones in their stead, most people did not pay much attention. But I think it’s important to note that by the time the HOLC closed its books, that agency had turned a small profit and helped over a million people keep their homes. And this was 70 years ago. Our population has grown dramatically. So, obviously, if we did it right, we would be able to save a lot of homes. And I think if it is administered correctly it could be actually a net expenditure or even winner for the federal government.

Now, with the FHA reforms that I have long championed adopted this summer in our Omnibus Housing Bill, the FHA could be already a modern Homeownership Lender Corporation. But we need to look to new ways to revive and if necessary create a new market for mortgage securities based on sound accounting, transparent recordkeeping and responsible lending.

A new government entity like the HOLC with a focus on attacking the source of the problem can serve the purpose of clearing a lot of those toxic mortgage securities from the market. We know there will not be any semblance of a normal or orderly marketplace until we have found a way to resolve these mortgage securities that are metastasizing in the bottom of our markets. By taking this paper out of the market and quarantining it in this new entity we will be able to give the market breathing room to recover. We will also be able to set the stage for an orderly sale of these securities and in turn allow some of them to recover and actually regain some of their value. Perhaps just as importantly, not only would our financial markets stabilize but so would our housing markets.

This is an extraordinary measure but it is not without precedent. This is the greatest market upheaval since the Great Depression. We are, indeed, in a crisis, and in times of crisis there are opportunities for leadership. Congress could show the American people that leadership working with the President by embracing this bold proposal.

Second, I’m calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission to take immediate action to address the abusive and manipulative short-selling practices that are rattling the markets, threatening firms and jobs and sending shockwaves across the broader economy. I commend the SEC for yesterday tightening rules against manipulative short-selling. The SEC’s rulings are a positive step in curbing the heightened volatility casting uncertainty on domestic markets and financial institutions. However, the Commission did not go far enough.

As a Senator from New York, I have a special duty to represent the workers of the financial services industry and to try with all my might to retain New York City as the financial capital of the world. The abuses that have disrupted the markets today will impact the lives of so many far beyond New York.

So I think it’s necessary for the SEC to take steps similar to the emergency rule it imposed this past July when the Commission concluded that there now exists a substantial threat of sudden and excessive fluctuations of security prices generally, and disruption in the functioning of the securities markets that could threaten fair and orderly markets.

Conditions now pose a greater threat than they did in July, and several of the institutions that the Commission sought to insulate from abuse do not even exist or certainly not in the in the same form that they did two months ago.

So we need to stay a step ahead, not a step behind. So I urge the Commission, as I expressed yesterday in a letter to Chairman Cox, to move toward a temporary moratorium on all of the abusive and manipulative short-sale practices associated with substantial financial firms like those the Commission identified in July. A temporary moratorium would allow the marketplace to take a step back, take a deep breath, and it would allow the Commission and other regulators to identify and weed out the sources of these abusive transactions.

Moreover the Commission should give close consideration to the many calls for the immediate restoration of the uptick rule, whose repeal has been linked to the recent market volatility and proliferation. I know there are technical problems in terms of moving toward digitized trading but we ought to be able to figure out how to handle those.

Third, I’m calling on President Bush to convene an economic summit right now that brings together leaders in the administration, the Congress, with lenders, consumer advocates, nonprofits, financial institutions and all the stakeholders. Such a summit, I believe, would restore confidence, demonstrate that the entire country is focused on solving the problem we face.

Fourth, I want to propose, once again, that we aggressively pursue and encourage mortgage modifications. I’ve introduced such legislation. I believe it’s important. Ten million homeowners are under water today carrying more than $2 trillion in mortgage debt. That is a huge anchor on our markets and economy. Modification, done right, is a strategy that serves lenders and borrowers as well as the broader markets.

Fifth, it is clear that for too long the rapid evolution of the securities and banking industry overwhelmed our regulatory framework resulting in an entire shadow banking system that operated outside of oversight and without accountability. It’s not enough just to shift responsibility or move lines on a flowchart. We need a new regulatory framework. We’ve been living off of the one from the Great Depression. Now is the time to create a new framework.

Six, I proposed the Corporate Executive Compensation Accountability and Transparency Act to impose new transparency rules on executive pay and the accounting techniques, the high compensation, and provide shareholders a say in executive compensation packages.

Finally, and seventh, I’m proposing that we require any financial institutions borrowing money from the Federal Reserve’s new lending facilities to open their books and ensure accountability and transparency to identify unsound practices. These banks and other entities have tapped the Fed’s new lending windows levels for over $300 billion in capital. They’ve shifted a lot of that risk onto the backs of our taxpayers. These are unprecedented interventions and we should make sure that these companies aren’t using taxpayer dollars to subsidize golden parachutes or risky investments, throwing your good money after bad. If we’re bailing you out we deserve to know exactly your liabilities. And you have to be part of this new regulatory framework.

This crisis has not abated. It’s time for us to start acting like Americans again. There isn’t anything we can’t solve once we put our minds to it. For that we need leadership. I know that our leader, Senator Reid, has said that the Senate will remain in pro forma session. We are ready to work with the administration, to work with the other stakeholders to change course and end the failed economic policies and failure of regulatory oversight that brought us to this point.

Now there’s much more, Madam President, that we need to do. Individuals have to take responsibility. We know that. But in this dynamic environment we must work together to stabilize the market, tackle the root causes that have festered too long, and restore confidence in our economy.

We’ll weather this storm but let’s do it sooner instead of later. Let’s try to save as many boats in the water right now instead of cleaning up the wreckage on the banks. I believe we can do that, and I thank you, Madam President, for your attention, and I hope that we’ll be able to start seeing action very soon. Thank you, and I yield the floor.

After watching the video of her remarks and reading the transcript, I sit here wondering why she isn’t our Democratic presidential candidate. And I remember the sadness and hole in my heart that I felt when I returned home from Montana and knew I would not see her as our candidate or our president this year.

He almost wrecked Barack Obama’s presidential dreams, and now firebrand pastor Jeremiah Wright has helped destroy a Dallas church worker’s marriage - and her job, The Post has learned.

You’ve seen the disgusting video of Reverend Wright, in a Sunday sermon, doing the the “hump” to suggest that Bill Clinton “done us wrong”:

The background story to Wright’s second marriage calls into serious question Wright’s “right” to preach to anyone. Here’s more from the Post:

Wright has been married to his second wife, Ramah, for more than 20 years.

The preacher reportedly wooed Ramah away from her first husband in the 1980s, when the couple came to marriage counseling at Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Now let’s see more reminders of Obama’s Reverend Wright. Remember this “America’s Chickens Come Home to Roost”?

The 37-year-old Elizabeth Payne admits to the affair but gives few other details.

Elizabeth Payne, 37, said she had a steamy sexual affair with the controversial, racially divisive man of the cloth while she was an executive assistant at a church headed by a popular Wright protégé.

She has since basically been excommunicated from the church, fired from her paid position in the church, and divorced. Her husband dashed to divorce court after the affair was discovered. She did have this to say about her life post-Wright:

Elizabeth Payne said she has been banished by Haynes and the flock at Friendship-West.

“I’m not a member of the congregation anymore; I’m not even allowed on the premises,” she said.

And she had this to say about her affair with Wright, her job and divorce:

“I was involved with Rev. Wright, and that’s why I lost my job and why my husband divorced me,” Payne said.

She refused to reveal when the adulterous affair started or how she met Wright.

But fellow churchgoers at Friendship-West “found out about the affair in the spring,” Payne said.

At the time, she was secretary to the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a longtime Wright disciple.

In April, Payne organized a series of Texas public appearances by Wright, 67. Weeks before, Obama had disavowed his preacher of 20 years after Wright’s anti-government rants came to light.

“Liz was by Rev. Wright’s side day and night during those days,” a church source said.

“It’s all true,” said Payne, adding that she has filed a wrongful-dismissal claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to get her job back.

In an interesting twist, Wright gave a sermon about trouble in relationships at a church in New Jersey. Here is more on that:

“There’s no such thing as a problem-free relationship,” he told a packed Elmwood United Presbyterian Church. “In life, you’ll have unexpected problems.”

Here are his words minus a controversial statement.

Payne’s husband, Fred Payne, 64, said he learned of the affair in late February, when he discovered e-mails between his wife and Wright.

“There must have been about 80 of them, back and forth,” he said. “Wright said things like he was going to leave his wife for Elizabeth.”

And now we need to be reminded of Obama on his spiritual mentor….

And we know that Reverend Wright/Wrong became a albatross around Obama’s neck. Obama did what he always has — he denied any knowledge of the sermons — the same way he denies responsibility for anything his campaign does!

And this is the man we want leading our country? Not!

Obama your “chickens have come home to roost!”

Good evening. Before I begin I’d like to thank the people who made it possible for me to be here tonight. They know who they are so I will allow them to remain anonymous. It is in honor to be a voice for those who could not make the journey. I’d also like to thank everyone at Seneca 160, the Asheville Hillary Meet Up, and of course the bitter crew at Bitterpoliticz for their unwavering support of Hillary throughout the election, into the summer, and beyond. And I want to thank all of you. Like Hillary, you stuck it out to the end and beyond. When everyone said shut up, you raised your voices louder. When Democracy was threatened you stood up in its defense. You have a lot to be proud of, and I am proud to call you my sisters and brothers in arms.

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History has a way of repeating itself. Some fail to study the journey of the past, often with disastrous consequences. Then there are those who look at the past, absorb it, and set themselves to the task of shifting the course of human events to alter the outcome, to advance and elevate the path of society. Even so, history does have a way of repeating itself.

In 1840 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott traveled to England to attend an abolitionist convention in London. Being shut out, due to their gender, they found each other on the street and agreed that a convention must be held to address the economic and political needs of women. That convention was held 160 years ago in Seneca Falls, New York. Three hundred-eighty women and men gathered to begin a conversation that changed the course of human events. The first wave of feminism was born with the words, “All men and all women are created equal.”

By 1912 that convention of 380 had grown exponentially. Women rose up for their rights in the work place, and for their right to vote. At the 1912 New York City March for Suffrage some 20,000 people marched. A reported half million lined the streets. The movement continued to grow, and once the challenge of gaining suffrage was accomplished, the fight for equality and women’s rights went on.

One hundred forty-seven years after Seneca Falls, then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, went to Beijing to address an international women’s conference themed, “Listen to the Women.” In a singular act of bravery, and at great political and personal risk, Hillary Clinton, standing on the shoulders of Stanton, Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Lemlich, Alice Paul, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others too many to name, changed the course of the conversation of the women’s movement forever. Before this international gathering of women leaders Hillary Clinton gave birth to what I consider to be the fourth wave of feminism with the following words:

It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed — and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely — and the right to be heard.

Women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries, if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.

Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.

That speech was heard around the world and inspired the international women’s movement. But American society is still trying to catch up to where Hillary has been for thirteen years. She was ahead of the curve as usual. Hillary planted the seed for the fourth wave of feminism; the wave that says this is not simply an issue about women. It is about all people. The seed has grown to a tree. The tree has born fruit. That fruit is us.

About 18 months ago Senator Clinton asked us to engage in a new conversation when she began her historic campaign for the Presidency of the United States. Joining the ranks of Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and many others, she set out to smash what she has called, “…the highest and hardest glass ceiling.”

She made history by being the first woman candidate to win a Presidential primary. She made history by winning more congressional districts and counties than any candidate in the 2008 Democratic Party Primaries. She made history by garnering more primary votes than any candidate in the history of the Democratic Party. And had the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee seated the Michigan and Florida delegations at full strength, and with fair reflection of the votes cast in those states, she would have finished the primary season with more pledged delegates. And those who failed to understand the lessons of history once again tried to prevent a woman from taking her rightful place at the Convention. Fortunately, we learned those lessons, and took action to make sure that history was not repeated.

It is obvious, to all who are paying attention, that the coup we witnessed this year was not simply directed at Senator Clinton. It was directed at us. It was directed at Democracy. When delegates can be stripped from one candidate given to another, whose name did not even appear on a ballot, then my friends, all we hold sacred as Americans is in jeopardy. It is not going to be enough to resist. It is not going to be enough to just say no deal. If we walk away from this at the end of the 2008 election cycle and the people who brought us this fiasco; Leah Daughtry, Alexis Herman, Donna Brazile, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and the rest of the junta are still in power at the DNC when the smoke clears, then The Democratic Party will remain a poisoned tree that will only deliver bitter fruit. And what will we do about it? Voting Republican and staying home are not viable options moving forward from 2008.

Where do we begin then? We can start by continuing to support the agenda that we fought for with Senator Clinton: universal healthcare, the green economy, the accessibility and affordability of a college education, the advancement of human rights, and the defense of equal rights. Not as platitudes to get elected, but solutions to the pressing issues that face our nation, and our world. We can support the work of Hill Pac, which is currently circulating a petition in defense of family planning. We can support Hillary in the Senate, or whichever office she may hold, by lobbying our elected officials to support legislation she is sponsoring. We can support the National Women’s History Museum in its effort to find a permanent home in our nation’s capital so that there is a place dedicated to telling the unique story of women in America. Most importantly, we must strengthen our political voice. We are not here because we’re sore losers. We are not here because we’re bitter. We are here because we are clinging. Clinging, with all the strength we have left to all we hold dear about this country.

We deserve a party that will not violate the most sacred codes that we honor and hold dear as Americans, and I say here and now that if the Democratic Party will not uphold those values then perhaps the time has come to break from that party and start anew. We will not let Democracy die at Invesco Field on Friday. We must eject the anti-democratic cabal from the DNC, or be prepared to build a new party out of the Democratic Party’s ashes: A party that stands unequivocally for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

A party that stands unequivocally for gay marriage and the equal protection of all people regardless of the color of their skin, religion, sexual orientation, age, economic status, or gender.

We deserve a party that stands for universal healthcare; a party that stands for the separation of church and state; a party that stands for our right to privacy and doesn’t sell it to complicit telecom companies; a party that stands for one person, one vote.

This road will not be easy. We have been called enemies. We have been threatened. Those who oppose us have tried to break our spirit, our will, and our determination, but will not be turned back. We will not be stalled. We will not be cowed, and we will not be broken. To paraphrase the oft quoted Susan B. Anthony; no self respecting American should wish or work for the success of a party which ignores them. We will not be enslaved.

The Mahatma once said, “How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master’s bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done.”

We will not do the master’s bidding. We have lived with this for too long. Hillary showed us what it means to stand and fight for what one believes in. Now it is time for us to rise.

Approximately 50-100 people attended the event ready to celebrate Hillary’s rise. They were excited and eager to share their Hillary stories and their sadness. Their sadness at the corruption, race baiting and denigration of the Clintons by Obama. Obama who has never treated Hillary or her supporters with any respect, will unfortunately become the Democratic nominee.

Rise Hillary Rise!

“We will take it from here”!

She discussed the roll call vote and ballots.

NancyA: Last night a Texas Delegate told me the “Roll Call” vote was being held in secret in hotel rooms. What have you been told?

Cindy: We will receive a “ballot” at the Breakfast Meeting Wednesday morning for our roll call vote. And then we will meet with Hillary. I am unsure what will happen in the General Session, whether we will re-vote.

NancyA: Have you found a great deal of pressure to vote for Obama?

Cindy. I have the impression that there is a lot of pressure on Clinton delegates to vote for Obama on the first ballot under the guise of “party unity”.

She said she hasn’t heard of any consequences if she doesn’t vote for Obama on the first ballot. She said she has remained open to her constituents that voted for her. She said her constituents have remonded quite often to stay strong for Hillary. And she spoke passionately about her commitment to vote for Hillary. Cindy feels that it is disrespectful to vote for Obama on the first ballot. There are many other delegates that holds her beliefs. She said there are other delegates who think it is wrong if Hillary Delegates vote for her on the first ballot, not for Obama.

There is still disunity in the party despite the call from the Democratic Party leadership to unify behind Obama.

“I’m going to cast my ballot for her, and then the moment I cast my vote, I’m going to continue to enthusiastically support Sen. Obama. It’s going to be a good release for all of us.”

He said this in his interview with the PolitikerPA:

Gov. Ed Rendell, in an interview with PolitickerPA.com today, lauded the resolution reached last week that will allow Clinton’s name to be placed in nomination, before U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) ultimately accepts the party’s presidential nomination.

“I think Sen. Obama was extremely generous, and I think it’s good not because it will display any disunity, but because it honors the hard work of so many people who supported Sen. Clinton,” said Rendell, who was one of Clinton’s most visible and vociferous campaigners during the run-up to the state’s April primary. “Many of the Pennsylvania delegates worked their heart out for Sen. Clinton, and they’re excited to cast a vote for her. From my vantage point, that will be closure for them.

Rendell thinks it will be closure for Hillary’s supporters. The only way it will be closure for Hillary supporters is if she is the nominee. Hillary is still the best choice for the Democratic Party.

It is a little too late for Obama to try to woo us over. We are reminded each day that Donna Brazile said there is a new Democratic base and most of us aren’t welcome. Then Obama tells Hillary supporters to just “get over it”.

Thanks Governor Rendell but your promise to vote for Hillary in the Roll Call just isn’t enough.

Governor Rendell, remind the Super Delegates Obama has some real issues, issues that could result in defeat for the Democratic Party in November. Here is the worrisome list of issues (by no means inclusive) that elected delegates and SDs should consider before voting for Obama, False FEC filings, Votes in the IL Senate on the live birth measure, Illegal contributions received from the three brothers in the Gaza Strip, then there is the issue of his birth certificate (a petition drive is underway) to demand the FEC insist that Obama release a certified copy of his birth certificate, continued association with ACORN, a company with a history of voter fraud and misuse of taxpayer money and finally there are his poll numbers, tied with McCain for the third time in two weeks.

See you in Denver!

When I first read the pre-publishing-date hype about the impending article, I thought: Why does this matter?  Hadn’t they heard that Hillary publicly threw her support behind Barack Obama back in June?  What’s the point of even trying to give the ex-candidate a black eye now?

Below are some rather unflattering conclusions that The Atlantic editor Josh Green drew based on the leaked emails, memos and notes:

"Two things struck me right away. The first was that, outward
appearances notwithstanding, the campaign prepared a clear strategy and did considerable planning. It sweated the large themes (Clinton’s late-in-the-game emergence as a blue-collar champion had been the idea all along) and the small details (campaign staffers in Portland, Oregon, kept tabs on Monica Lewinsky, who lived there, to avoid any surprise encounters).

"The second was the thought: Wow, it was even worse than I’d imagined! The anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even the most reserved Beltway wise men. Surprisingly, Clinton herself, when pressed, was her own shrewdest strategist, a role that had never been her strong suit in the White House. But her advisers couldn’t execute strategy; they routinely attacked and undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Major decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly she would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire."

"Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency. What follows is the inside account of how the campaign for the seemingly unstoppable Democratic nominee came into being, and then came apart."(The Atlantic)

In short, Mr. Green thinks 1) that Hillary’s staff was largely incompetent, and 2) that Hillary didn’t have what it takes to be president after all.

I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the leaker(s) chose to leak the emails, memos and notes before the Democratic National Convention.

Presumably, Hillary’s ex-staffers are Democrats.  Presumably, they’ve followed Hillary’s lead and are supporting Barack Obama: ex-Hillary Campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, for example, now works for the Obama campaign. Presumably, the ex-staffers want Democratic voters to unify behind Obama (especially the ones who now work for him), to improve his chances of beating McCain.

All that said, what on earth were the ex-staffers trying to accomplish by leaking the emails (etc) before the Democratic convention?

Hadn’t they heard that many Democratic voters are still very upset with the Democratic Party and rather reluctant to embrace unity?

True enough, November isn’t next week, and time has a way of healing wounds. But for any Democrats to even appear to be publicly smearing Hillary — especially since she started supporting Obama — is like taking 100-grade sandpaper to a scab.

I can see why the leaker(s) might have been eager to give the curious public a glimpse of the campaign’s inner workings.  But such a generous contribution to history could have waited until after the convention — or even after the November election.

Perhaps the leaker(s) were on a sour-grapes mission, seeking the satisfaction of publicly swiping at odious ex-colleagues.  Understandable, I suppose.

In the process, however, the leaker(s) were simultaneously painted by the brush of their own wielding — in that the entire campaign staff came off as rather puerile, unprofessional, and Three Stooges like in the competence department. 

I can think of better ways to attract future job opportunities.

Being an outsider, I don’t know who was thinking what when leaking the emails, memos and notes. We, the reading public, might better understand the motivation if the leaker(s) were identified in The Atlantic’s article.

Come to think of it, why wouldn’t the leaker(s) stand up and own the leakage?  I can’t imagine that they broke any laws by sharing emails that were sent to them or notes that they jotted down with their own hand.

I suspect that Hillary and her former staffers have a good idea of which high-level staffers even had access to all the leaked emails and that they’ve figured out which people did the leaking.

So, what’s the big secret?

“I’m not going to be coerced into something I don’t believe in,” said Krause, who lives in Colorado Springs and owns a real estate office. “That makes me less unified. If they let me have my voice, I’ll feel more unified.”

This is an overwhelming feeling among delegates and supporters all around the country. In Houston last night an Obama supporter, Democratic Party delegate for Obama, Roger Harris spoke about the “the silent message”, the e-mails he has received from PUMAs “wanting delegates to back Hillary Clinton”. He talked about the numbers of e-mails he received in one day.

“The first round I got 99 (e-mails). The second round I got 50 and the next round I got 60. All in the same day,” said Harris, who will be an Obama delegate to the party’s national convention.

PUMAPAC had this to say:

The group told 11 News that it’s also urging Clinton to challenge Obama to a vote at the convention.

A vote the political group said would heal the party, not divide it.

“You can’t achieve unity by telling one side to shut up,” the PAC said in a statement to 11 News. “You have to let the delegates vote for their candidate on the first ballot.

“The fact is, (the party is) extremely split.”

And Clinton supporters across the country want that vote.

Though the majority of the Democratic Party backs Sen. Barack Obama, an undercurrent of staunch and loyal Clinton supporters say they’ll fight all the way to the national convention, which begins Aug. 25 in Denver, to put her name on the ballot.

And it is about the rules of an open convention. It is about the party and basic principles.

Because they were chosen by her supporters in districts across the country, many say they won’t feel that they have fulfilled their duty until they cast a vote for her — however futile that might be.

“I will come on board the unity train with a first-class ticket if, before doing so, I get the opportunity to vote for my candidate,” said Daniel Kagan, a property developer and lawyer from Arapahoe County. “On Aug. 28, when Obama accepts the nomination, I will be there cheering along with the rest of them, but only if I have had the chance to vote first.”

Kagan is among a small group of people working to garner 300 signatures from national delegates to complete DNC rule requirements to put Clinton’s name back on the ballot. Even if they get enough signatures, Clinton must agree to have her name placed on the ballot.

Dean says the decision belongs to Hillary. And there is more on that.

Asked whether Clinton’s name would be on the ballot, Democratic National Convention Committee spokeswoman Natalie Wyeth said that DNC chairman Howard Dean “has said that’s up to her, whether she will put her name in nomination.”

Clinton has said in YouTube postings and in a Web chat Thursday that she is working with the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign to find a solution.

Texas delegate Linda Figueroa, a 53-year-old paralegal from Corpus Christi, said the pledged Clinton supporters were told in a delegate conference call this week that they would not get to vote for her. Figueroa said the senator’s scheduled speech on the floor of the Pepsi Center on Tuesday evening, Aug. 26, was “not enough.”

So many others are speaking out including a “300″ petition to get Hillary’s name placed in nomination.

In an attempt to inspire the masses, Kagan, a delegate from Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, borrowed from French philosopher Voltaire.

“I don’t agree with the way you intend to vote, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to vote,” he said.

Others, like Will Bower, a founder of Project Unity My A–, or PUMA, are not ready to support Obama.

“Most of us are still working toward getting Hillary the nomination,” he said. “We still see a path for victory in Denver.”

There will be an Anti-”coronation” protest according to Simone DuBois. More on Simone Dubois and her group:

At the convention, vociferous Clinton supporters will protest and hold signs that will read “Denounce Nobama’s Coronation.”

Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart had to throw in his two cents too, which weren’t needed:

Allowing delegates to vote for their chosen candidate gives them an opportunity to celebrate that candidate and their work on the campaign, said former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who ran for president in 1984 and 1988.

At the convention in 1984, Hart said, each of his 1,200 delegates voted for him “with no defections.”

“My people put on a massive demonstration. It went on for 10 or 15 minutes,” Hart said. “They felt very good about it afterward.”

Hart thinks Clinton, a longtime party loyalist, will want to prevent protests and help Obama get elected.

But still many Clinton supporters feel Obama has not done enough to offer peace in the party. He was dismissive of Hillary and her supporters during the primaries. And one Colorado resident spoke out on that. Her words echo a sentiment in many Hillary supporters.

Awilda Marquez, a Colorado delegate, said she feels like his campaign has been dismissive of Clinton supporters.

“They say they don’t need us. . . . I don’t spend 30 seconds a day thinking about that,” Marquez said. “When I see a top woman being called a whore and a she-goat, . . . I can’t forget that.”

In a few weeks the historic 2008 Democratic Party Presidential Primary between an African American Man and a White Woman will end.  The two candidates competed in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam.  At the end of these contests, neither candidate had earned enough pledged delegates to garner the necessary 2118 needed to win the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.  Hillary Clinton earned 1640 pledged delegates while Barack Obama earned 1763 pledged delegates. A paltry 123 pledged separated the two candidates at the end of the primary season.  Since there was no clear winner, the superdelegates would determine the Democratic nominee.

Approximately 800 superdelegates will make up around 20% of the 4000 delegates at the convention.   These superdelegates are Democratic Party leaders, Democratic governors, and Democratic members of Congress.  They have the right to endorse either candidate without reason and can change their endorsement from one candidate to another at any time.  The superdelegates are very powerful and highly sought after by candidates.  One superdelegate is equal to one pledged delegate or 11,361 voters in California or  7,220 voters in New York.  Many factors influence which candidate a superdelegate  a superdelegate endorses but they usually vote the way their constituents vote.   Some superdelegates have intense personal relationships with particular candidates that may influence their endorsement.  Members of Congress may also be influenced by money given or promised by party leaders, the DNC or the candidates themselves.

Politicians collect money for their campaigns but most Americans don’t realize that politicians collect a separate a pot of money called a Leadership Political Action Committee or PAC.  These PACs are used to hire additional staff and pay for additional perks such as limos and first class flights.  But one of the major reasons for these PACs is to donate to the campaigns of other candidates.  Nancy Pelosi’s PAC is called  PAC to the Future, Barack Obama’s PAC is called Hope Fund, and Hillary  Clinton’s PAC is called HillPAC.  Money was distributed by these PACs to the superdelegates to influence their voting.  The Federal Elections Commission requires scrupulous reporting of how PAC money is obtained and how it is spent.  This data can be retrieved at www.opensecrets.org.

In 2007, Obama distributed 299,000 from his PAC to superdelegates.  He especially targeted the states of Iowa and New Hampshire.    On July 25, 2007, the Hope Fund made $1000 donations to each of the following groups: Hillsborough=2
0County Democrats, Hudson, NH; Martha Fuller Clark for State Senate, Portsmouth, NH; Merrimack County Democrats, Chichester, NH; New Hampshire for John Lynch, Manchester, NH; Sgambati 4 NH Senate, Tilton, NH; Stafford County Democratic Committee, Durham, NH and Sullivan County Democrats, Claremont, NH.  Obama also gave $5000 contributions to New Hampshire Democratic Party, Concord, New Hampshire, on July 26,2007; New Hampshire for John Lynch on July 25, 2007, and New Hampshire Democratic State Committee, Concord, New Hampshire on November 3, 2006.   Obama did not announce his candidacy until May 2, 2007.

Obama also gave New Hampshire Democratic State Senator Jacalyn Cilley $1000 on July 25, 2007.  She endorsed Obama on July 31, 2007, just six days after his contribution to her campaign.  On July 26, 2007, first term New Hampshire Congressman Paul Hodes of New Hampshire endorsed Obama.  The New Hampshire Primary was not until January 8, 2008 and Hillary won New Hampshire.

By March 28, 2008, Hope Fund donated $710,900 to superdelegates, more than three times as much as HillPAC. ($236,100).  A study by the Center for Responsive Politics showed that presidential candidates who gave more money to a superdelegate received their endorsement 82% of the time. This is especially disturbing when the superdelegates endorse a candidate that is decidedly contrary to the will of the voters in their state and their districts.

After reviewing state and congressional voting records as well as PAC donations, members of Congress were identified that fulfilled the following four criteria:  1. These members endorsed Barack Obama.  2. The constituents of their state preferred  Hillary Clinton.  3. The constituents of their district preferred Hillary Clinton. 4. They got more PAC money from Hope Fund than from HillPAC.  These senators are Jeff Bingaman, Frank Lautenberg, and Jay Rockefeller.  The members of the house are Jason Altmire, Dennis Cardoza,  Jim Costa, Joe Donelly, Gabrielle Giffords, Baron Hill, Ron Klein, Patrick Murphy, Gerald Mc Nerney, Carol She-Porter, Zack Space, Niki Tsongas, and  Charlie Wilson.

Charlie Wilson is the perfect example. He ran in Ohio’s District 6 in 2006.   His seat was the seat of the former governor and is located in Southern Ohio.  Wilson was a last minute candidate for his seat and because of this was a write-in candidate.  The governor and the party worked hard to get Wilson elected.   President Clinton made an audio recording endorsing Wilson that went out to 50,000 homes.   The governor of Ohio is a big Clinton supporter, the voters of Ohio voted 54-44% percent in favor of Clinton, and District 6, Wilson’s District, voted for Clinton 70% - 27%.  Yet Wilson endorsed Obama.  It looks like there is no loyalty in politics to either your constituents or your friends.  Wilson got $7,000 of PAC money from Barack Obama, but no money from Hillary Clinton.  Was this a factor in his choice?

This chart summarizes the data culled from a variety of sources.  The data raises obvious questions about the inherent power of superdelegates and their vulnerability to financial contributions.  Contributions from other PACs such as PAC to the Future need to be reviewed.

Chart of Contributions to Superdelegates

The video at the top of this post is the result of a collaboration between myself, GeekLove, and RealDemocratsUSA. We put our heads together to develop a video that would tell the story about superdelegates in dynamic style. We highlighted those members of the Senate and the House of Representatives who met the following criteria:

1. Their home states (and congressional districts, for House members) voted for Senator Clinton in the Democratic primary,
2. they accepted PAC money from Obama, and
3. they endorsed Obama.

Please share, link, or embed the video far and wide: Money Changes Everything: Superdelegates Are For Sale.

Dr. Lynette Long is a writer and the author of 20 books including 14 math books. She has published dozens of articles in trade and professional journals.  She has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs.  Her blog is www.lynettelong.com. You can contact her at DrLynetteLong@aol.com.

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NoQuarterUSA Action Of The Day: We ask that you take part in the I Own My Vote Virtual Platform Committee Meeting now! It takes five minutes. Click here to start. If you have not yet signed the pledge, click here to do so.

Another highlight was watching the FISA votes from the Senate visitors’ gallery at the capitol [Wednesday, July 9]. Senators Clinton and Obama were there, as were Leahy, Dodd, Webb and Specter. It was my version of a star-studded movie premier. Sadly geeky, I know.

As we all know, the three amendments against Telecom Amnesty failed and the FISA bill passed — complete with Telecom Amnesty. One result: we taxpayers may em>never find out the extent to which telecom companies and the Bush Administration had violated our nation’s laws. 

Not only was Wednesday’s vote a blow to the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, it was
also a blow to government accountability.  But I digress.

I went to the Senate gallery about an hour before the voting was scheduled to start.  Being alone, I was able to change seats numerous times as visitors came and went.  Just before the voting started, I managed to get a seat with the broadest view of the chamber.

I’d expected an efficient voting process: i.e., that all senators would take their seats and push buttons that electronically record their votes.  It wasn’t like that.

Instead, Senators trickled into the chamber, most of them not punctually.  Even before the chamber filled up, a lady at the dais slowly and repeatedly read the list of all 100 senators’ names, in alphabetical order, trying to record a vote for each one while most senators were gathered in  clusters, chatting with each other.

It looked like a cocktail party, minus the open bar, though I can’t swear that none of our senators were carrying concealed flasks of hooch.

The gallery visitors were mostly silent until Sen. Barack Obama entered.  Incidentally, he’s as handsome in person as on TV.

Unfortunately, Sen. Obama was chomping on a wad of gum as he made his way around the chamber floor, stopping every few feet to give enthusiastic hand shakes and shoulder pats to his visibly senior, mostly graying colleagues.

Sen. Obama didn’t exactly swagger: it was more like a studiedly relaxed gate — like a high school athlete walking into an awards dinner. 

I was surprised, because Sen. Obama comes off as dignified — even elegant — on TV.  His air was nearly the opposite in person that day.  I half expected him to deliver elaborate, frat-boy handshakes.  I was relieved that he did not.

My advice to Sen. Obama’s handlers: tell him to lose the gum, as it undermines his image among people who are — how shall I say it –  concerned about dignity and maturity.

A few minutes later Sen. Hillary Clinton arrived, and the gallery crowd stirred even more.  I’d hoped that she would glance up to the gallery, so I could wave a subtle hello in her direction.  She did not.

Oddly, Hillary and Barack did not interact during the floor votes — even when they were 10 or 15 feet apart. I didn’t even see them look at each other.  They just kept chatting with other people.

Admittedly, I don’t know what they were thinking, because my mind-reading skills are still in New England, protesting Florida’s oppressive humidity. 

The only interaction I saw between them for what seemed like nearly an hour was when Sen. Obama was getting ready to leave. As he headed for one of the four exits, he made a pit stop in front of  Sen. Clinton, formally shook her hand, and patted her upper arm. 

Sen. Clinton and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) also chatted briefly.  The interaction didn’t look unpleasant, but neither of them made efforts to smile.  McCaskill, as you may recall, has been parroting misleading sound bites in favor of Telecom Amnesty since at least February.  Hillary has been against it for months.

Sen. Obama and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA) — who led cheers for Telecom Amnesty– briefly interacted, both sporting smiles. 

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who has repeatedly spoken against Telecom Amnesty, interacted with Sen. Obama twice.  Once, Leahy’s back was toward me, and Obama was smiling.  Once, when Obama was talking to two other senators, Leahy approached and tried to say something but couldn’t seem to find a place to interject.  After a few moments, he walked away.  I have no idea what that was about because I don’t have bionic ears, but Leahy didn’t look particularly jovial.

Soon thereafter, Leahy approached Hillary.  They talked and smiled for a few minutes.  Leahy was one of the Party Elders who publicly endorsed Obama early this year, urging Hillary to drop out of the race. 

I wonder if Sen. Leahy now regrets that gesture, given that Sen. Obama  ended up opposing Leahy’s strong stance against the FISA bill and Telecom Amnesty, while Sen. Clinton ended up voting with Leahy.

That’s it for my people watching. I don’t know what to make of my observations: I just thought I’d share them, for whatever they’re worth.

Incidentally, I was also at the Senate gallery on Tuesday [July 8] to hear debates about the FISA bill and Telecom Amnesty. 

An actual debate never really happened.  It was more like individual senators taking turns making speeches.  Except for the people at the dais, including a gaggle of interns or pages (I don’t know the difference), the chamber was almost empty.

When I first arrived, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) was speaking.  At least I think it was Bond: the reason I’m not sure is that in person he looks about 20 years older than in his website photo. 

Many other senators also look different in person than on their websites.  My advice: update your photos, so that visitors can recognize you more easily. Don’t worry: we taxpayers are the ones paying the photographers.

Anyway, Sen. Bond made misleading statements about Telecom Amnesty, saying that telecom companies would refuse cooperate with governmental efforts to track terrorists in the future if they could be held legally liable for doing so. 

Apparently, Sen. Bond wasn’t aware that if the government presents a telecom company with a valid warrant, the telecom company would have to cooperate and couldn’t be held liable for doing so.  I found his apparent unawareness stunning, because Sen. Bond graduated from law school at the top of his class.

I stuck around for a half hour or so and got to hear Sens. Arlen Specter and Leahy argue against Telecom Amnesty.  Wanting to leave on a high note, I departed shortly thereafter.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5JkHBC5lDs[/youtube]
[for your reading pleasure, click to play music]

Remember what this election was supposed to be? This was the shoo-in year for the Democrats. This was the year that they couldn’t make a mistake. Why, with a disastrous war that most Americans think is wrong, that is robbing our economy and killing more innocents than bad guys, making enemies because we’re so reckless, how could they possibly lose?

But once again, my Party found a way to shoot themselves in the foot.

The DNC, which by the way is a private company with no obligation to keep its word about anything, willfully decided to pass over the most qualified candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton. After this decision, they did everything they could to sabotage her receiving the nomination. Every time she had a big win, they trotted out another new super endorsement. Now a feckless cult-of-personality, cute-smile guy, who bullied his way to the top and incessantly rails against people, has tricked others into thinking he has anything at all to do with hope.

Haven’t you ever been played before? At first, the guy tells you you’re the hottest this ‘n that, things escalate. You think he sees you, that he thinks you’re special. You think he’s your soulmate only to find out that he’s got another whole life, girlfriend, wife, etc. The reason it’s so hard to accept is that you bought it so completely. And what you bought was the part where you felt seen.

So this cute guy smiles and sidles up to you. He says you’re cool, but not those other people, they’re not cool — they wear Gucci loafers, are bad dads, tote guns, and don’t speak French or Spanish. He weasels his bad opinions into your ear with humor. He gets you to laugh at the others. It must be okay, because the minister preaches it to his members, “Look at those fools!” And they howl with laughter.

What’s new school about that? What’s unifying about that? What’s different about that person than the snobs who wouldn’t talk to you in high school? What’s different about that behavior than the hate promoted by dictators speaking in large stadiums to adulating crowds?

All through my life, I have attended services of many congregations and denominations, including white and black, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and many, many more. I’ve never gone to a place that preached hate. If I went once, I’d never return. What’s uplifting about preaching hatefulness, and isn’t that a subtle form of violence? When I go to temple or to meditate, I go because I want to be uplifted, to reach higher—not stoop lower.

I thought only my people did that, you know, kvetch and kvetch about what they don’t like. (Oh, I kid.) Isn’t it easier to complain rather than come up with a genuine plan or an original idea? And the folly of it all, is that’s how he eliminated Hillary—just kept pushing a meme: she was this or that, blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile, Hillary kept saying what she would do. The more she did that, the more that real citizens began to listen and follow her. Why? Because understanding a problem in-depth, and providing an actual compassionate solution IS Hope! When you actually listen to people, and they feel heard, it improves their mood (and yours), and they feel hopeful. Just like you thought the player did, but the player had nothing inside, was hollow, and in the end, deserted you. In the end, the player just moved on to next, because it really was always about him, not about you anyway. So what do you think? Have you been played? From the blogosphere:

You know, I defended that f–ker.

That’s about all I can say, because anything else is going to be incoherent babbling and profanity-laced. And for everyone who told me I should have backed Clinton, you’re right.

But that’s not really the bad part. No it’s not really about you or me or Hillary. The bad part is that while Obama complains and talks about more stuff he doesn’t like, soldiers and innocents still die every day in Iraq. The bad part is that every day he procrastinates having a plan, he betrays the people who are losing homes, savings, and hopes of a stable future. The bad part is that, while this joke of a nominee and the power-grabbing Dems who supported him book a stadium and even try for the Brandenburg gate, they push to have Hillary Clinton sweep up their crumbs. The bad part is this spineless candidate and his enablers have robbed, robbed the people of this country a means by which they could have improved it, kept it from its apparent slow death.

Make you mad? Make you sad? Make you sick? That is precisely why we continue our protest. We cannot give up. We must keep moving forward, make our voices heard, and claim what is our right by vote of the people: the nomination of Hillary Clinton our President. We’ve all been working so hard, but our job is made increasingly easier by the repeated unconscious blunders of a candidate who, although he plays it real cool, really doesn’t have a clue.

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I’ve witnessed all your suffering
As the battle raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

Pickett’s Charge was an infantry assault ordered by Confederate General Robert E. Lee against Maj. Gen. George G. Meade’s Union positions on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863. . . . Its futility was predicted by the charge’s commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, and it was arguably an avoidable mistake from which the Southern war effort never fully recovered psychologically. The farthest point reached by the attack has been nicknamed the high-water mark of the Confederacy.

Barack’s flip-floppery of the past two weeks–FISA, Partial Birth Abortion, NAFTA, Expanded support for Faith Based initiatives, and Iraq–might not generate much heat for a run-of-the-mill politician who was just doing business as usual. But Barack convinced many in America that he was different. The hagiography that substituted for normal reporting during the last year on Barack simply confirms his status as a mythological religious icon. While Barack is not the first politico to make a mad dash for the center, he is the first to do it so far in advance of a political convention that will be decided by unelected super delegates.

Barack up to now has enjoyed the luxury of being portrayed as a NEW KIND OF POLITICIAN.
He was not like those old guys and gals. He is shiny new and sparkling clean. He means what he says and says what he means. Believe in HIM and there is hope for a new tomorrow.

Well, that was the bullshit line he sold many progressives and Democratic party stalwarts. But in a series of moves that resembled a helicopter rotor spinning before lift off, Barack became just one more old-style, political panderer.

When you preach against whoremongers and adulterers then you better be sure you are not caught in bed with Hollywood Madam, Heidi Fleiss. And you damn sure better not do it during the dog days of July and August when reporters, who are bored and worrying about upcoming (or recently concluded) vacations, are looking for easy stories. (Remember that reporters, by and large, are lazy bastards and reflect a herd mentality that makes lemmings envious.) Well, Barack has given them a Christmas in July holiday–albeit an unsavory, steaming pile of hypocrisy that will keep the media picking thru it for the next month.

Of course this would not be newsworthy if Barack was just some cynical, crusty pol. But when you are the incarnation of a new age Messiah–a chocolate skinned Jesus preaching hope and change–you cannot pretend to walk on water. You better stay on top and not get wet. Because once you jump into the cess pool of politics as usual then you get that stink all over you. This is the week Barack got the stink.

I was going to start linking up all of the articles touching on this transformation, but realized it would more than fill a page. (Here are a couple of representative samples, Obama’s Chicago Boys and The Honeymoon is Over. Obama, for whatever reason, decided to try to take the center. But like General Pickett’s futile, bloody charge 145 years ago, Obama’s effort came up short and he did enormous harm to his army of starry-eyed disciples. Whether of not this will set in motion the forces that re-energizes the candidacy of Hillary remains to be seen, but this much is sure–this is the week Barack became just one more political hack from Chicago.

It is one thing to think you have found the golden calf. But it is a damn rough awakening when you find green tarnish covering your gold. You then realize it ain’t gold, just cheap brass. This is the week Barack lost his shine. So much for the Golden child.

Here is what Hillary said about herself and one of the reasons we still want HER.

Clinton, in fact, makes no bones about the matter when we speak. “I’m not a very comfortable public figure,” she explains. “I don’t particularly like the attention. I like the work. I like the sense of forward movement and progress. At the end of the day, what I’m interested in is what we’ve done that actually moves the agenda forward.”

Heilemann also says the democrats may have a new group to worry about, a la the Reagan democrats - the Hillary democrats. And, as to whether or not Hillary would be Obama’s VP - as many of us hope she does NOT do, Heilemann offers this:

If the call doesn’t come from Obama, Clinton will return to the Senate—where, in many ways, she will instantly become the first among equals. “She’ll be greatly, greatly enhanced,” says former senator Bob Kerrey. “She’ll have the most valuable e-mail list in the Senate. She’ll be the most heavily sought out person in the Congress as an endorser, a fund-raiser. Everybody is gonna want to have her come and campaign for them. She’s gonna be at the very top of everybody’s list.”

In this sense, if Obama wishes to marginalize her, he may offer the VP.

Also quite interesting is the fact that Hillary allowed herself to go on record as pessimistic about Obama’s chances in the fall. This is backed up by a discussion of the relative coalitions both candidates forged and should serve as a warning to the DNC, but is not likely to. Given Gov. Strickland’s unwillingness to endorse Obama and Gov. Rendell’s recent experiences with the Obama campaign (and the fact it was reported), it seems something is going on.

It’s worth your time to read this; even the accompanying pictures are good.

I will “use all of my present and future resources to benefit [the Black]community first and foremost

Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites…it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first

there is a distinctive Black culture different from White culture.

[A] Black person may have all White friends and prefer these friends and their activities to those with Blacks without the individual believing that he/she is White

Are these the long-awaited excerpts from Michelle Obama’s “whitey” rant? No, these gems of racial “tolerance” come from her Princeton thesis. As the Obama campaign unleashes its Orcs to stifle dissent and cover-up Michelle’s greatest hits, we believe an analysis of Michelle Obama’s public statements and writings offer plenty of material to understand her views on race, with or without the audio tape.

Like archaeologists uncovering artifacts to decipher a culture, we view Michelle’s extant words as a crystallization of a worldview which can be examined to understand her views on race in America. Michelle Obama wrote the quotes above in her Princeton thesis on race and in it acknowledges that that she is influenced by and utilizes the definition of black “separationism” offered by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their 1967 screed Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. She writes:Stokely Carmichael guided Michelle Obama’s thesis on race? This is very important. Carmichael was not a mainstream academic source in his times. He was not the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of the 1960s, writing scholarly, brilliant works on black America. In fact, Carmichael, the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party, espoused a violent black separatist philosophy which was diametrically opposed to Dr. King’s and the Civil Rights Movement’s struggle for integration and equality.

In his 1966 article entitled What We Want, in the New York Review of Books, Stokely Carmichael wrote, “about plots to ‘get Whitey‘” saying that “Black people don’t want to ‘get whitey,’” and in a 1969 article entitled Toward Black Liberation, Carmichael talks about racial incidents as “Git Whitey” “sensationalism.” Christopher Hitchens writes:

I remember poor Stokely Carmichael quite well. After a hideous series of political and personal fiascos, he fled to Africa, renamed himself Kwame Toure after two of West Africa’s most repellently failed dictators, and then came briefly back to the United States before electing to die in exile. I last saw him as the warm-up speaker for Louis Farrakhan in Madison Square Garden in 1985, on the evening when Farrakhan made himself famous by warning Jews, “You can’t say ‘Never Again’ to God, because when he puts you in the ovens, you’re there forever.”

Consider for a moment that Michelle Obama built her thesis on the philosophy of a man who believed that “Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks.”

Next consider her statement that she will “use all of my present and future resources to benefit [the Black] community first and foremost.” [Emphasis added]

Lastly, remember that the Obamas spent 20 years as active students of Jeremiah Wright’s odious racist rants. Think about that in mathematical terms. If they attended church for two hours weekly, that’s 2,000 hours of Jeremiah Wright, or one full year of working at a job 40 hours a week. That’s a lot of “United States of KKK-A.” The Obamas were, until recently, members of a church which describes itself in explicitly racial language:

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. [emphasis added]

In other words, the Obamas were active participants in a black separatist church, a church which explicitly emphasized skin color over salvation, heritage over faith, one group of people instead of the universality of spiritual needs.The ideology espoused from this church may sound innocuous to Obama’s supporters. But it’s an important question, in a diverse nation of 300 million. Do we want a couple in the White House whose stated influences include Stokely Carmichael and Jeremiah Wright instead of Martin Luther King? Or someone who said:

For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country

Really, Michelle? Is it because Barack is so wonderful that only now you’re proud of your country or is there another reason you’re proud for the first time? Please tell us the reason. Or as Christopher Hitchens asks about Obama:

If there is a reason why the potential nominee has been keeping what he himself now admits to be very bad company—and if the rest of his character seems to make this improbable—then either he is hiding something and/or it is legitimate to ask him about his partner.