Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout

It is actually very simple how we now find ourselves bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A little history first: As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed $388 billion in high-risk mortgages and was the primary customer of all sub-prime mortgage pools (loans made to high-risk customers). If real estate prices continued to rise, then the high-risk was reduced, but when those prices began to fall, then the risk went off the charts. Both were also enmeshed in accounting scandals on an unimaginable scale. For the first time in history, a reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee in 2005 that would have required both companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets and establish strict regulations. But the bill never made it into law. The Democrats opposed it on a tight party-line vote and would not even allow the Senate to vote on the matter. And so the abuse and the losses continued. Republican presidential candidate John McCain was one of the three sponsors of that historic reform bill that would have averted the mess we now find ourselves in and must pay for through our taxes. And we now know that Democrat Barack Obama opposed the reform bill (as did Hillary Clinton) and that Mr Obama subsequently received $125,000 in campaign contributions from the PAC's of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Clinton received about $75,000. Not surprisingly, Mr McCain received nothing from either PAC. I think the answer as to who is to blame for our current crisis is pretty clear.

Global cooling

Established in 1792, the Old Farmers Almanac is North America's oldest continuously publishing periodical. Boasting nearly 20 million readers, the little yellow magazine still comes with a hole in the corner so it can hang in outhouses. Based on the same time-honored complex calculations it uses to predict weather, the Almanac says that a study on solar activity and corresponding records on ocean temperatures and climate indicate a cooler, not warmer, climate for the world for the next 50 years. Meteorologist and climatologist Joe D'Aleo says that sunspot cycles and their effects on oceans correlate with climate changes and that all the indicators are for a cooling off of world temperatures. Global warming has always been a fraudulent premise intended to induce hysteria and ultimately to line the pockets of its proponents. Now, hopefully, the house of cards it is built on can begin to crumble. Mother Earth is much more resilient than the Al Gores of the world would have you believe.