petulant, abrasive and downright nasty

I would have preferred that the real tea bagger in Congress had been drawn and quartered, but we will have to settle for his quitting.

 

Congress Will Be a Better Place When Barney Frank Is Gone

By Karl Rove

Published November 29, 2011 | FoxNews.com

It was because he was going to retire anyway, lost a favorite port town in redistricting and had a tough race last time.

Was this really why Congressman Barney Frank announced today he’s retiring from the House of Representatives?

Perhaps another reason was he’s no longer chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and like a lot of bullies, Mr. Frank found it’s not easy to be stripped of the power to torment and humiliate others.

Brilliant, but acid tongued and generally unpleasant, Mr. Frank ruled with an iron gavel, ran over critics with delight and treated committee members and especially Republican colleagues as lesser forms of life.

Mr. Frank’s departure in January 2013 will remove from the House one of its more offensive members. Until then, this petulant, abrasive and downright nasty Congressman will keep making his presence known.

However, it is unlikely that Mr. Frank is leaving for the reason he should depart Congress: out of shame for all he did to stop reform of Fannie and Freddie while there was still time to avert the disaster that almost took down the American economy.

In 2003, he called Fannie and Freddie “fundamentally sound financially” and accused the Bush Administration of trying to “exaggerate a threat of safety… [to] conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see."

A year later, he said talk of financial problems at Fannie and Freddie were “an artificial issue created by the administration...I don't think we are in any remote danger here."

In 2007, as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and just as Fannie and Freddie – overleveraged and stuffed to the gills with risky mortgages they’d encouraged and facilitated – were about to go over the cliff, Mr. Frank attacked President George W. Bush’s call for reform as “inane.”

Yet when Fannie and Freddie went belly up in the fall of 2008, Mr. Frank voted for the same Bush Administration reforms that could have averted the bankruptcies of Fannie and Freddie.

Why did Mr. Frank oppose giving these two gigantic financial institutions the same scrutiny as a local bank, a neighborhood savings and loan or a community credit union?

Fannie and Freddie provided “grease” for the Democratic political machine through hundreds of millions in charitable contributions to left wing community and advocacy groups that are critical to Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.

Fannie and Freddie hired vast armies of influence peddlers – admittedly from both parties, but mostly Democrats – to forestall any efforts at reasonable regulation.

Fannie and, to a lesser extent, Freddie, were led by Democratic political power brokers, masquerading as mortgage bankers while advising Democratic presidents, vetting Democratic running mates, and plumping the election hopes of Congressional Democrats.

Mr. Frank is incapable of feeling shame, regret or a sense of personal responsibility. These are emotions for lesser beings. He’s leaving because of redistricting or to avoid having to raise money or facing those nasty little voters every two years. The House will be a better place for his departure.

Karl Rove is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. He is a Fox News contributor and author of "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions, 2010).

Guns

The Skinny Socialist

This  was written by Gary Hubbell, a rancher, fishing guide and real estate agent, in Aspen, Colorado of all places. I hope he is right. I am not sure we can ever escape the debt load.

Barack Obama is the best thing that has happened to America in the last 100 years. Truly, he is the savior of America's future.

Despite the fact that he has some of the lowest approval ratings among recent presidents, history will see Barack Obama as the source of America 's resurrection. Barack Obama has plunged the country into levels of debt that we could not have previously imagined; his efforts to nationalize health care have been met with fierce resistance nationwide; TARP bailouts and stimulus spending have shown little positive effect on the national economy; unemployment is unacceptably high and looks to remain that way for most of a decade; legacy entitlement programs have ballooned to unsustainable levels, and there is a seething anger in the populace.

That's why Barack Obama is such a good thing for America . Here's why.

Obama is the symbol of a creeping liberalism that has infected our society like a cancer for the last 100 years. Just as Hitler is the face of fascism, Obama will go down in history as the face of unchecked liberalism. The cancer metastasized to the point where it could no longer be ignored.

Average Americans who have quietly gone about their lives, earning a paycheck, contributing to their favorite charities, going to high school football games on Friday night, spending their weekends at the beach or on hunting trips - they've gotten off the fence. They've woken up. There is a level of political activism in this country that we haven't seen since the American Revolution, and Barack Obama has been the catalyst that has sparked a restructuring of the American political and social consciousness.

Think of the crap we've slowly learned to tolerate over the past 50 years as liberalism sought to re-structure theAmerica that was the symbol of freedom and liberty to all the people of the world. Immigration laws were ignored on the basis of compassion. Welfare policies encouraged irresponsibility, the fracturing of families, and a cycle of generations of dependency. Debt was regarded as a tonic to lubricate the economy. Our children left school having been taught that they are exceptional and special, while great numbers of them cannot perform basic functions of mathematics and literacy. Legislators decided that people could not be trusted to defend their own homes, and stripped citizens of their rights to own firearms. Productive members of society have been penalized with a heavy burden of taxes in order to support legions of do-nothings who loll around, reveling in their addictions, obesity, indolence, ignorance and "disabilities." Criminals have been arrested and re-arrested, coddled and set free to pillage the citizenry yet again. Lawyers routinely extort fortunes from doctors, contractors and business people with dubious torts.

We slowly learned to tolerate these outrages, shaking our heads in disbelief, and we went on with our lives.

But Barack Obama has ripped the lid off a seething cauldron of dissatisfaction and unrest.

A former Communist is given a paid government position in the White House as an advisor to the president. Auto companies are taken over by the government, and the auto workers' union - whose contracts are completely insupportable in any economic sense - is rewarded with a stake in the company. Government bails out Wall Street investment bankers and insurance companies, who pay their executives outrageous bonuses as thanks for the public support. Terrorists are read their Miranda rights and given free lawyers. And, despite overwhelming public disapproval, Barack Obama has pushed forward with a health care plan that would re-structure one-sixth of the American economy.

Literally millions of Americans have had enough. They're organizing, they're studying the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, they're reading history and case law, they're showing up at rallies and meetings, and a slew of conservative candidates are throwing their hats into the ring. Is there a revolution brewing? Yes, in the sense that there is a keen awareness that our priorities and sensibilities must be radically re-structured. Will it be a violent revolution? No. It will be done through the interpretation of the original document that has guided us for 220 "FANTASTIC" years--- the Constitution. Just as the pendulum swung to embrace political correctness and liberalism, there will be a backlash, a complete repudiation of a hundred years of nonsense. A hundred years from now, history will perceive the year 2010 as the time when America got back on the right track. And for that, we can thank Barack Hussein Obama.