Patriotic Dissent

Molon Labe Christmas!

2011-12-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

Everything Molon Labe for Christmas!

Cuff links, clocks, shirts, watches..you name it. Check it out here.

It's a Gadsden Christmas

2011-12-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

Everything Gadsden for the Patriot in your life.

The Gadsden clock comes in several types, as do the Gadsden cuff links, lighters, magnets, stickers, and shirts. Check them out here.

U.S. boosts estimate of auto bailout losses to $23.6B

2011-11-16T11:00:00.000-08:00

Autos Insider | U.S. boosts estimate of auto bailout losses to $23.6B | The Detroit News

I thought all that was paid back! You mean we were lied to?

The Treasury Department dramatically boosted its estimate of losses from its $85 billion auto industry bailout by more than $9 billion in the face of General Motors Co.'s steep stock decline.

In its monthly report to Congress, the Treasury Department now says it expects to lose $23.6 billion, up from its previous estimate of $14.33 billion. The Treasury now pegs the cost of the bailout of GM, Chrysler Group LLC and the auto finance companies at $79.6 billion. It no longer includes $5 billion it set aside to guarantee payments to auto suppliers in 2009.

The big increase is a reflection of the sharp decline in the value of GM's share price.
The current estimate of losses is based on GM's Sept. 30 closing price of $20.18, down one-third over the previous quarterly price.

GM's stock closed Monday at $22.99, up 2 percent. The government won't reassess the estimate of the costs until Dec. 30. The government has recovered $23.2 billion of its $49.5 billion GM bailout, and cut its stake in the company from 61 percent to 26.5 percent. But it has been forced to put on hold the sale of its remaining 500 million shares of stock.

The new estimate also hikes the overall cost of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program costs to taxpayers. TARP is the emergency program approved by Congress in late 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.

In total, the government used $425 billion to bailout banks, insurance companies and automakers, and provided $45 billion in housing program assistance.
The government now expects to lose $57.33 billion, including the full cost of the housing program, up from $36.7 billion. The new estimate means the government doesn't believe it will make an overall profit on its bailouts.

U.S. boosts estimate of auto bailout losses to $23.6B

Protest the Too Big to Fail

2011-11-15T13:01:00.000-08:00

Stand at your local TBTF bank and hand out these flyers. Peacefully, not obstructing traffic, and on the public sidewalk.

Click on the image, then right click to download or print.

Solyndra: Energy Dept. pushed firm to keep layoffs quiet until after midterms

2011-11-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

Solyndra: Energy Dept. pushed firm to keep layoffs quiet until after midterms - The Washington Post

The Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections, newly released e-mails show.

Solyndra, the now-shuttered California company, had been a poster child of President Obama’s initiative to invest in clean energies and received the administration’s first energy loan of $535 million. But a year ago, in October 2010, the solar panel manufacturer was quickly running out of money and had warned the Energy Department it would need emergency cash to avoid having to shut down.

The new e-mails about the layoff announcement were released Tuesday morning as part of a House Energy and Commerce committee memo, provided in advance of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s scheduled testimony before the investigative committee Thursday.

Solyndra’s chief executive warned the Energy Department on Oct. 25, 2010, that he intended to announce worker layoffs Oct. 28. He said he was spurred by numerous calls from reporters and potential investors about rumors the firm was in financial trouble and was planning to lay off workers and close one of its two plants.

But in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail, advisers to Solyndra’s primary investor, Argonaut Equity, explain that the Energy Department had strongly urged the company to put off the layoff announcement until Nov. 3. The midterm elections were held Nov. 2, and led to Republicans taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“DOE continues to be cooperative and have indicated that they will fund the November draw on our loan (app. $40 million) but have not committed to December yet,” a Solyndra investor adviser wrote Oct. 30. “They did push very hard for us to hold our announcement of the consolidation to employees and vendors to Nov. 3rd – oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.”

This just keeps getting better.

Obama Admin Funnels BILLIONS to Cronies

2011-11-14T14:05:00.000-08:00

...4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers

That's your tax money being shoveled out to companies like Solyndra.

…In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.

Wow. That's pretty blatant.

Hope and Change? For who exactly Mr. Obama?

…These programs might be the greatest—and most expensive—example of crony capitalism in American history. Tens of billions of dollars went to firms controlled or owned by fundraisers, bundlers, and political allies, many of whom—surprise!—are now raising money for Obama again.

Orignial article.

Impeach. Today.

Undercover cops seize another OWS generator

2011-11-13T12:41:00.000-08:00

Undercover cops seize another OWS generator--from a street vendor - YouTube

That's theft. We need to shame these "peace keepers" since the rule of law no longer functions in this country.

White House Refuses Solyndra Subpoena

2011-11-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

White House Refuses Solyndra Subpoena - National News Story - KSAT San Antonio

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House counsel refused Friday to comply with a subpoena as issued by a House panel regarding the failed solar energy company Solyndra, saying that the initiative "was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation."
Kathryn Ruemmler expressed her views in a letter to Reps. Fred Upton and Cliff Stearns, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A day earlier, one of its subcommittees requested internal documents regarding the government's decision to issue more than half a billion dollars in federal loan guarantees in 2010 to Solyndra, which later filed for bankruptcy.

Any idea what happens to you or me if we decide that a subpoena is unacceptable? It appears that the White House is above the law.

Wall Street Isn't Winning It's Cheating

2011-10-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

A must read.

Wall Street Isn't Winning It's Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

FREE MONEY. Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve. They borrow at zero and lend the same money back to the government at two or three percent, a valuable public service otherwise known as "standing in the middle and taking a gigantic cut when the government decides to lend money to itself."

Or the banks borrow billions at zero and lend mortgages to us at four percent, or credit cards at twenty or twenty-five percent. This is essentially an official government license to be rich, handed out at the expense of prudent ordinary citizens, who now no longer receive much interest on their CDs or other saved income. It is virtually impossible to not make money in banking when you have unlimited access to free money, especially when the government keeps buying its own cash back from you at market rates.

Truth.

CREDIT AMNESTY. If you or I miss a $7 payment on a Gap card or, heaven forbid, a mortgage payment, you can forget about the great computer in the sky ever overlooking your mistake. But serial financial fuckups like Citigroup and Bank of America overextended themselves by the hundreds of billions and pumped trillions of dollars of deadly leverage into the system -- and got rewarded with things like the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, an FDIC plan that allowed irresponsible banks to borrow against the government's credit rating.

Truth.

STUPIDITY INSURANCE. Defenders of the banks like to talk a lot about how we shouldn't feel sorry for people who've been foreclosed upon, because it's they're own fault for borrowing more than they can pay back, buying more house than they can afford, etc. And critics of OWS have assailed protesters for complaining about things like foreclosure by claiming these folks want “something for nothing.”

This is ironic because, as one of the Rolling Stone editors put it last week, “something for nothing is Wall Street’s official policy." In fact, getting bailed out for bad investment decisions has been de rigeur on Wall Street not just since 2008, but for decades.

Time after time, when big banks screw up and make irresponsible bets that blow up in their faces, they've scored bailouts. It doesn't matter whether it was the Mexican currency bailout of 1994 (when the state bailed out speculators who gambled on the peso) or the IMF/World Bank bailout of Russia in 1998 (a bailout of speculators in the "emerging markets") or the Long-Term Capital Management Bailout of the same year (in which the rescue of investors in a harebrained hedge-fund trading scheme was deemed a matter of international urgency by the Federal Reserve), Wall Street has long grown accustomed to getting bailed out for its mistakes.

Read it all, and if you're not pissed off you haven't been paying attention.

Occupy Wall Street and U.S. Hypocricy

2011-10-20T06:36:00.000-07:00

The Sanders Report - Corruption in the FED

2011-10-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, and board director at the New York Fed

The GAO found that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York consulted with General Electric on the creation of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility established during the financial crisis. The Fed later provided $16 billion in financing to General Electric under this emergency lending program. This occurred while Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, served as a director on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (See page 39 of GAO report)

Nice.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and board director at the New York Federal Reserve

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the same time that his bank received emergency loans from the Fed and while his bank was used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for the Fed's emergency lending programs. (See page 40 of GAO report)
In March of 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $30 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. During this time period, Jamie Dimon was successful in getting the Fed to provide JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. Dimon also convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear
Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank. (See page 86 of GAO report)

Even better!

 In 2010, the 108 members of the Federal Reserve's board of directors are predominately white men who are senior executives of financial institutions. (See the front page of GAO report)

 While Congress has mandated that the Federal Reserve's board of directors consist of experts in labor, consumer protection, agriculture, commerce, and industry, only 11 of the 202 members of the Federal Reserve's board of directors represented labor and consumer interests
from 2006-2010. (See page 19 of GAO report)

Read it all here.

Occupy Wall Street Protest Signs

2011-10-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

Free to download and print*, these are 22" x 14" or one half of a standard poster board. Set your printer to print poster style, 4 sheets on Landscape. Click on the image to get the full size, then right click and choose Save As. All designs can be purchased as t-shirts here.

*permission is granted for sign use only, no commercial use allowed.

Occupy Wall Street Merchandise

2011-10-18T09:47:00.001-07:00

Need something to wear while you convince DC to STOP THE LOOTING AND START THE PROSECUTING? Here you go:

Dylan Ratigan: Platinum Citizenship

2011-10-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

Dylan Ratigan: Platinum Citizenship

Read it all, it's very important if not new news.

If you are heading to your local OWS protest, you need to have your facts straight. Mr. Ratigan's article will help you with that.

For instance, the Fed accepted almost $500 billion of CCC rated junk as collateral in loans. In other words, if you had a suburban tract home in the Inland Empire with a mortgage and a home equity line of credit, you were out of luck. But if you owned the debt on the home equity line of credit on that same suburban tract home home, you could have easily gone to the discount window or one of the emergency lending facilities and gotten cash with basically no interest charged.

We Are 99 Percent Shirt

Obama administration Meddles in Alabama State Law

2011-10-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Obama administration appeals Alabama immigration law - Yahoo! News:

'via Blog this'

U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn earlier this week backed the law authorizing police to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally if they cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason.

The judge also upheld a provision that permits the state to require public schools to determine the legal residency of children. Federal judges in other states have blocked similar state laws aimed at trying to stem illegal immigration.

The Justice Department filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, and also asked Blackburn to put her ruling on hold pending that appeal.
The administration argued that the U.S. Constitution made immigration a federal matter that "cannot be subject to a patchwork of state measures. Alabama thus has no authority to regulate in the area of immigration."

I have to prove that my child was born (provide a legal birth certificate) and prove where I live (to prove we are in the correct school district). Yet the Obama administration doesn't feel it's important to prove the child is here legally.

I guess we just have unlimited funds and I missed the memo.

More Lies: WH Emails Reveal Major Obamacare Accounting Fraud

2011-09-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

More Lies: WH Emails Reveal Major Obamacare Accounting Fraud - Guy Benson:

'via Blog this'

Chicago politics as usual?

They knew it was a lie. Their actuaries told them so. The math was clear. They didn't care. If CLASS goosed the numbers for the broader bill -- thus helping secure the historic power grab they'd been salivating over forever -- these Statists were thrilled to adopt an "ends justifies the means" mentality. And that, my friends, is how the White House and Democrats manipulated the CBO score, lied their asses off to the American public, and passed their unaffordable, unwanted healthcare monstrosity under deliberately false pretenses. This. Crew. Must. Go.

Indeed. The problem is Mr. Benson - they are all just as bad.

Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Resigns Over Global Warming

2011-09-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Resigns Over Global Warming | Fox News:

'via Blog this'

"I resign from APS," Giaever wrote.
Giaever was cooled to the statement on warming theory by a line claiming that "the evidence is incontrovertible."
"In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" he wrote in an email to Kate Kirby, executive officer of the physics society.
"The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period," his email message said.
A spokesman for the APS confirmed to FoxNews.com that the Nobel Laureate had declined to pay his annual dues in the society and had resigned. He also noted that the society had no plans to revise its statement.

Is he getting paid by Big Oil? He's obviously got dementia right? Or wait...his specialty is physics not climate science! Just watch the cult of AGW froth at the mouth to denounce this man.

Stop Global Whining

$500 BILLION More in Debt, Thanks U.S. Senate

2011-09-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

Senate Approves $500 Billion Increase in Borrowing Authority - Washington Wire - WSJ:

'via Blog this'

So what was with all that gnashing off teeth over the debt limit? This was nothing more than a way around the checks and balances of our political system.

The complicated procedure, designed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), would allow an increase of the borrowing limit while allowing most Republicans to vote against such an increase.

More debt on us all.

Obama Lies About Tax Cuts

2011-09-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

Obama’s whopper of a claim on tax cuts - The Fact Checker - The Washington Post:

'via Blog this'

I guess he thinks we're all idiots.

“We said working folks deserved a break, so within one month of me taking office, we signed into law the biggest middle-class tax cut in history, putting more money into your pockets.”

— President Obama, Sept. 5, 2011

No, not you didn't Mr. Obama.

We took an informal survey in our office and asked people what they thought the president’s statement meant. Everyone agreed he was claiming the biggest tax cut in terms of dollars.

Imagine our surprise when the White House responded that he wasn’t talking about dollars at all.

“The point the president was making that is there is not a tax cut that has been enjoyed by such a broad section of the population,” an administration official said, pointing to a report that said that 95 percent of working families received some kind of tax cut under the Making Work Pay provision in his stimulus bill.

Huh?

In other words, this isn’t about the size of the tax cut, but about the fact that every working family, except those making more than $190,000, received as much as $800 in tax cuts.

That strikes us as very odd way to claim “the biggest,” but maybe that’s because Obama can’t make that claim. We ran the numbers every which way, but the fairest over time is to look at the tax cut as a percentage of national income (Gross Domestic Product minus depreciation.)

John F. Kennedy seems to win the prize for biggest tax cut, at least in the last half century. By the same measure, the income tax provisions of George W. Bush tax cuts are more than twice as large as Obama’s tax cut over the same three-year time span. (Yes, a large portion of Bush’s tax cut went to the wealthy, but it also benefited the working poor. We still don’t know what Obama means by “middle class,” since his definition also seems to include the working poor.)

Lies and more lies. :)

Obama Says He Is "Proud" Of Hoffa

2011-09-05T18:14:00.000-07:00

Obama Says He Is "Proud" Of Hoffa | RealClearPolitics:

'via Blog this'

Proud of Hoffa. Proud of Hoffa stating "take these son of bitches out", referring to Republicans of course. How nice Mr. President. How...bilateral.

How classy.

I've got a better idea, let's take these UNIONS out. Every.Last one of them.

Abolish The Unions

Undocumented workers got billions from IRS in tax credits, audit finds - The Federal Eye

2011-09-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

Undocumented workers got billions from IRS in tax credits, audit finds - The Federal Eye - The Washington Post:

'via Blog this'

No surprise to most of us, so why is it that politicians will act shocked, say they're going to MAKE CHANGES, and then do exactly nothing? Because they don't really care.

And tell me again that illegals won't be getting Obamacare too? What's that saying about fooling me once?

President Obama’s uncle had Social Security ID

2011-08-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

President Obama’s uncle had Social Security ID - BostonHerald.com:

'via Blog this'

President Obama’s accused drunken-driving uncle — who was busted after a near collision with a Framingham cop — has had a valid Social Security number for at least 19 years, despite being an illegal immigrant ordered to be deported back to Kenya, the Herald has learned.

How's that? He's illegal yet has a SSN? So, does this mean that he's eligible for Obamacare too? You bet he is.

Land of the Free? Not So Fast

2011-08-30T09:48:00.001-07:00

We need a reset.

Obama's Race-Based Spoils System

2011-08-28T16:02:00.000-07:00

Obama's Race-Based Spoils System - HUMAN EVENTS

Think Obama won't be playing the race card hard for the 2012 election? Think again.

Obama, wrote Isaac Arnsdorf, is targeting "a problem that has been on the administration's radar. Whites still hold more than 81 percent of senior pay-level positions."

Now, as white folks are two-thirds of the U.S. population, and perhaps three-fourths of those in the 45 to 65 age group who would normally be at senior federal positions, why is this "a problem"?

As no one has contended otherwise, we have to assume that the men and women who hold these top positions got there because of the longevity of their service and the superiority of their skills.

Why is the color of their skin a "problem" for Barack Obama?

As reported here previously, African-Americans are hardly underrepresented in the U.S. government.

Though only 12 percent to 13 percent of the U.S. population, blacks hold 18 percent of all federal jobs. African-Americans are 25 percent of the employees at Treasury and Veterans Affairs, 31 percent of State Department employees, 37 percent of the Department of Education, 38 percent of Housing and Urban Development. They are 42 percent of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 55 percent of the Government Printing Office, 82 percent of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency.

According to The Washington Post, blacks hold 44 percent of the jobs at Fannie Mae and 50 percent of the jobs at Freddie Mac.

The EEOC, where African-Americans are overrepresented by 300 percent, has been asked to oversee the new "government-wide initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce."

I'm not making this up.

Obama is all about helping out his brothers, and unless you're black AND a democrat - you don't count.

Obama Admin Hates the Working Poor

2011-08-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for a wave of coal-plant shutdowns - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post

There is no way this won't impact people who are already hurting. Between upping the cost of electricity and the loss of jobs, it's just another Hope and Change moment for the Obama administration.