Archive for the 'Give Me Liberty' Category

McCain ready to fight! It’s about time that the Maverick set the record straight on Fannie and Freddie.

Published
by
HawkEye
on October 6, 2008
in 2008 Presidential Election and Give Me Liberty
. 1 Comment

It’s being reported everywhere that Senator John McCain is starting to make the valid case of attaching blame of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacles squarely where it belongs. Today in New Mexico McCain clearly stated that he coauthored legislation to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while the Democrats fought it in effect killing the bill in committee while the rookie Obama remained silent.

I applaud the decision for McCain to press this important issue that speaks to judgment and experience – two things that Senator Obama lacks.

From around the conservative blogosphere, the news is being met with excitement. Here are few examples:

Michelle Malkin:

Don’t go wobbly now, McCain.

Don’t stop.

Take your own advice: Stand up and fight.

Ace of Spades:

The debate is the second-to-last chance to raise these concerns with 50 million Americans at once.

Merely making tough remarks at campaign appearances isn’t going to help.

But perhaps he’s finally heard the alarm bells.


Redstate:

In a statement obtained by RedState, Sen. John McCain today will lay plain the crisis on Wall Street - not to mention Main Street - firmly on the narrow shoulders of those who caused it in the first place: the Democratic Party in general, and Senator Barack Obama in particular. He’s going to talk about it all. Here’s a taste:

Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.

Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them. Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans? Did he ever discuss with them the stronger oversight I proposed? If Senator Obama is such a champion of financial regulation, why didn’t he support these regulations that could have prevented this crisis in the first place? He won’t tell you, but you deserve an answer.

To our lurkers: that’s John McCain calling your guy a gutless, two-faced coward who lets others do his fighting. Which, by the
way, is perfectly correct.

Senator Shelby lambastes bill and all the Chicken Littles — votes no

Published
by
HawkEye
on October 2, 2008
in Give Me Liberty
. 0 Comments

Michelle Malkin has listed the telephone numbers of each US Representative who opposed the Paulson “crap-sandwich” bill earlier this week.

Please call your representative and tell them to follow Senator Richard Shelby’s lead in voting no. I watched Shelby’s speech last night on C-SPAN and was blown away by his thoughtfulness and warnings to not make a hasty decision. Heck pass along his speech to your rep.

CNSNews has coverage of it here.

Update:

Here is a video of Shelby on Lou Dobbs discussing the bill yesterday:

Obama’s campaign anthem is released with imagery

Published
by
HawkEye
on August 27, 2008
in Give Me Liberty
. 0 Comments

I heard this on the radio listening to Glenn Beck this weekend, and it made me laugh. It’s even better with the added pictures. Keep a look out for Che Obama.

Beck told the story about how hard it was to find someone to honor the Obamamessiah.

Obama and public financing or how do you spell hypocrite? O-B-A-M-A

Published
by
HawkEye
on August 6, 2008
in 2008 Presidential Election, Give Me Liberty, Liberals Lie and Obama "The Rudderless"
. 0 Comments

It’s fairly well documented that Obama flip-flopped on using public funding. He had agreed to accept public financing if McCain would but at the last moment he reneged after he had discovered through the primary process that his campaign benefited from his rock-star status.

Here is what Obama answered on a questionnaire promising to accept public financing as presented by Andrew Romano of Newsweek:

Asked last September on a questionnaire from the Midwest Democracy Network whether he would “participate in the presidential public financing system” if his “major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign,” Obama checked the box marked “yes,” then outlined his vision for the 2008 contest. “In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election,” he wrote. “My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election… If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”

What was his reasoning for failing to honor his word? Jack Tapper covered this over at Political Punch:

Obama’s reasoning on his blog:
In a web video to supporters — “the people who built this movement from the bottom up” — Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, announced this morning that he will not enter into the public financing system, despite a previous pledge to do so.

“We’ve made the decision not to participate in the public financing system for the general election,” Obama says in the video, blaming it on the need to combat Republicans, saying “we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”

Today the Drudge Report has provided links to three different articles that basically shoot holes through Senator Obama’s argument. The fact is that Obama has relied heavily on big donors (more so than Hillary Clinton and John McCain) and that Obama has been building his big money campaign machine for quite some time that include celebrities wooing foreign donations from across the Atlantic.

So ask yourself the following question: Who’s “gaming this broken system”? Obama, despite all of his talking about being a new type of politician and that he represents “Change that we can believe in”, is actually part of the old money making machine that relies on big business and foreign money to finance his campaign.

Here are links to the three articles that Drudge had posted. Please read them for yourselves and make up your own mind.

IHT: Big donors are the key to Obama’s record haul
CNN: Hollywood megastar to host fundraiser for Obama
Chicago Sun-Times: Obama taps celebs to woo high end donors.

Barack Obama calls Americans “embarrassing” compared to Europeans

Published
by
HawkEye
on July 9, 2008
in 2008 Presidential Election, Give Me Liberty and Obama "The Rudderless"
. 0 Comments

Leon Wolf over at RedState provides excellent commentary in his posting “I’m Having a Hard Time Selecting my Favorite Part of this Video” on the video below of Senator Barack Obama. The presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate is filmed calling Americans “embarrassing” when comparing Americans’ foreign language skills to those of Europeans, and the crowd (and Obama himself) seems to enjoy the rookie senator’s humor at the expense of other Americans. Wolf has a hard time picking out his favorite part — watch it and see why:

I’m in agreement with Wolf (and Obama) that it’s an excellent benefit to know another foreign language (or two). Both of my young daughters are in fact learning Spanish, but unlike Obama, I’m hardly embarrassed by Americans who speak only English. You add this video to the audio of Brack Obama calling gun and religion clinging Americans “bitter” and I personally believe you have a pretty condemning look at Obama’s worldview and his opinions of Americans. Let’s just call him George Soros Jr. :-)

Sadly, Obama and his supporters seem to get a good chuckle out of Obama’s slam, but forgive me if I fail to laugh along considering this man wants to be President for all of America including those who only speak English. No wonder he has to spend so much time defending his patriotism with speeches and his new fond fondness for flag pins on his lapel.

Obama’s Deteriorated Housing Fiasco and Cronyism: Change we can believe in?

Published
by
HawkEye
on June 27, 2008
in Give Me Liberty
. 0 Comments

The rookie senator from Illinois has some more explaining to do over some of his close acquaintances. Binyamin Appelbaum writing for the Boston Globe looks at the housing work that then state senator did in securing millions of dollars for his cronies to develop and/or manage Chicago housing. Appelbaum writes in his article titled “Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy”:

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama’s former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

Some of the residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama did not notice their plight. The development straddles the boundary of Obama’s state Senate district. Many of the tenants have been his constituents for more than a decade.

“No one should have to live like this, and no one did anything about it,” said Cynthia Ashley, who has lived at Grove Parc since 1994.

Ok, so maybe the rookie shouldn’t be blamed for this right? After all, he tried his best to secure funding but it’s not his fault is somehow this project was mismanaged into deterioriation. He enabled the project but he didn’t manage it. Obama’s campaign might want you to believe this.

But please ask the dynamic Senator why did he grant failed participants in Grove Parc with critical positions on his senatorial and presedential campaigns? Appelbaum reveals the following about the change candidate:

Among those tied to Obama politically, personally, or professionally are:

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.

Allison Davis, a major fund-raiser for Obama’s US Senate campaign and a former lead partner at Obama’s former law firm. Davis, a developer, was involved in the creation of Grove Parc and has used government subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,500 units in Chicago, including a North Side building cited by city inspectors last year after chronic plumbing failures resulted in raw sewage spilling into several apartments.

Cronyism and poor oversight — those don’t exactly scream change we can believe in. It’s more like change from which we should run. As more about Obama’s political comes to light, it will expose the Senator and remove the luster from his weak on experience and weak on substance campaign. Actions matter more than words. And Senator Obama, your words are starting to look a little hollow considering this story.

The Conservative Pulse: Surprise Obama is a flip-floper, and more

Published
by
HawkEye
on June 20, 2008
in Give Me Liberty and The Conservative Pulse
. 0 Comments
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