[I-S] Gingrich Said Freddie Mac Could Be Good Model for Mars Travel - Bloomberg

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-01/freddie-mac-efficiency-could-put-man-on-mars-gingrich-once-said.html

Gingrich Said Freddie Mac Could Be Good Model for Mars Travel

Newt Gingrich in 2007 extolled the virtues of Freddie Mac (FMCC), saying he would be "very cautious" about changing the way the mortgage-finance company's public- private business plan operated.

In an interview placed on Freddie Mac's website, the Republican presidential candidate said the U.S. government- sponsored enterprise, or GSE, could serve as a guide for rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged Gulf of Mexico, improving health care and funding space exploration. For decades, Freddie Mac collected profits while benefiting from an implicit taxpayer guarantee of its debt,

"I'm convinced that, if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today," Gingrich said in the April 24, 2007, web post.

"While we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself," he said. It "marries private enterprise to a public purpose."

At the time of his comments, Freddie Mac and its larger rival Fannie Mae were under fire from Republicans, who said their government charters allowed them to make profits for shareholders while putting taxpayers at risk. Gingrich, a former U.S. House speaker, has voiced criticism of the companies in recent years.

The companies' government backing made home loans artificially inexpensive and allowed the companies to squeeze private players out of the mortgage-lending business, their critics said.

Half of Home Loans

In 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee more than half of U.S. home loans, collapsed under the weight of failing subprime loans. They were forced into government conservatorship and have since survived on taxpayer aid, drawing more than $170 billion from a U.S. Treasury Department lifeline.

Gingrich was an adviser to Freddie Mac when the company published his comments. His consulting company, the Gingrich Group, received between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in fees from the mortgage company.

"I recognize that there are times when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development," he said in the 2007 interview, which was previously reported by the blog Verum Serum.

Gingrich's contract with Freddie Mac ended in 2008. Campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond said it isn't surprising that Gingrich's views have changed since 2007.

Aggressive Overhaul

"As to whether Newt now advocates a more aggressive overhaul of Fannie and Freddie than he previously did -- of course he does," Hammond said in an e-mail. "The total collapse of the global financial system has a tendency to make one look at a situation with a fresh set of eyes."

In a book published this year, Gingrich called for broad change to the mortgage system.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae "are so thoroughly politicized and preside over such irresponsible lending policies that they need to be replaced with smaller, private companies operating without government guarantees, whose leaders focus on making a profit, not manipulating politicians," he wrote in "To Save America."

In the 2007 interview, Gingrich endorsed the public-private partnerships used to build railroads and supply telephone service and electricity to rural Americans.

"All of these are examples of government bringing about desired public purposes without creating massive, taxpayer- funded bureaucracies," Gingrich said. "To me, that is a pragmatic and effective conservative approach."

To contact the reporter on this story: Lorraine Woellert in Washington at lwoellert@bloomberg.net. 

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lawrence Roberts at lroberts13@bloomberg.net.

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Newt-Onian Foreign Policy

Newt-Onian Foreign Policy
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Newt Gingrich's foreign policy views are a combination of wild, irresponsible, and aggressive warmongering, extraordinary naivete about the nature of government, and juvenile hero worship. One only needs to read his September 7, 2006 Wall Street Journal article entitled "Lincoln and Bush" to see the truth in this statement.

First, Congress should declare that we are in World War III, says Gingrich. This in turn will require a "dramatically larger budget." And what should be done with this dramatically larger budget? According to Gingrich, the U.S. military should invade Lebanon with the purpose of "disarming Hezbollah." This would effectively commence another war with Syria, says Gingrich, as it would be "the first direct defeat of Syria," which supposedly pulls the strings of Hezbollah. It would also be an assault on Iran, says the former House speaker, and would therefore be an act of war against that country as well.

Next, full-scale warfare should be waged against North Korea, Iran and Syria with the objective of "replacing the repressive dictatorships" in those countries. All of this would somehow serve in "restoring American prestige in the region," says Gingrich. Yes, murdering hundreds of thousands of Iranians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and destroying their cities and their infrastructure of civilization, which is what war does, would surely lead the people of those countries to think of Americans as "prestigious."

Gingrich seems vaguely aware that war always causes an explosion of governmental powers and a corresponding destruction of liberty and prosperity at home. Thus, he makes the case for magically transforming the Pentagon into a paragon of efficiency. He sounds a lot like an early twentieth-century communist preaching the praises of "scientific socialism." "Clear metrics of achievement" should be implemented, as though the usual politics would not prohibit such a thing, as it has for hundreds of years in all societies. The Pentagon must be made more "business-like," an oxymoron if ever there was one.

The domestic police state should also be expanded exponentially, said Gingrich, as long as the Fatherland Security Bureaucracy is also run in a super-efficient manner, with "metrics-based performance" measurements. He does have his business school lingo down cold.

Just in case anyone criticizes his proposal for a half dozen or so new wars, Gingrich plays the standard neocon "ace-in-the-hole" strategy of quoting the "sainted" Abraham Lincoln. "We must think anew and act anew," he quotes Lincoln as saying. He praises Lincoln's response to Fort Sumter, where not a single person was harmed, let alone killed. In response to the knocking down of some bricks at the fort, Lincoln responded with a full-scale invasion of all the Southern states, waging total war on the civilian population as well, and killing some 350,000 American citizens in those states. This of course was the very definition of treason under Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution, which defines treason as only "levying war upon the states" or "giving aid and comfort to their enemies."

Gingrich says that secession would have meant "the end of the United States" when in fact the exact opposite is true: The voluntary union of the founding fathers – their United States – was destroyed by Lincoln's war. To Gingrich, Lincoln's unconstitutional invasion of the Southern states was "the road to victory." (Lincoln's greatest failure was his failure to do what all the other major powers of the mid nineteenth century did with regard to slavery, and end it peacefully).

Gingrich also seems totally unaware of or unconcerned about blowback or retaliation for American military aggression. He screeches that "terrorist recruiting is still occurring" (duh) without making any mention of the fact that such recruiting is an inevitable consequence of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Such "recruiting" will increase by many orders of magnitude should Newt Gingrich be elected president and enter the U.S. into World Wars III, IV, V, and VI, as is apparently his pipe dream.

Gingrich Gets Worse Every Time You Look at Him

He adds, "I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism." In other words, not conservative at all.

December2nd
Gingrich Gets Worse Every Time You Look at Him
Tom Woods

In a 2007 interview from Freddie Mac's website floating around the Web right now, Gingrich says:

Certainly there is a lot of debate today about the housing GSEs [Government Supported Enterprises -- in this case, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac], but I think it is telling that there is strong bipartisan support for maintaining the GSE model in housing. There is not much support for the idea of removing the GSE charters from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And I think it's clear why. The housing GSEs have made an important contribution to homeownership and the housing finance system. We have a much more liquid and stable housing finance system than we would have without the GSEs. And making homeownership more accessible and affordable is a policy goal I believe conservatives should embrace. Millions of people have entered the middle class through building wealth in their homes, and there is a lot of evidence that homeownership contributes to stable families and communities. These are results I think conservatives should embrace and want to extend as widely as possible. So while we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself.

He adds, "I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism." In other words, not conservative at all.

Meanwhile, courtesy of Lew Rockwell's Political Theatre, we read that evangelicals are flocking to Newt. Every four years the various evangelical leaders seek out a transparent fake they can have betray and exploit them, and apparently Newt's the one for 2012.

Here's the guy a truly moral people would choose:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Wnj-5z9NJoY

And here I am making the case for him to evangelicals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sPqG3fiff1g

http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/gingrich-gets-worse-every-time-you-look-at-him/

Gingrich Backed Everything the Right Hated About the Bush Years

Gingrich Backed Everything the Right Hated About the Bush Years
Have conservatives forgotten all their complaints about the GOP's last administration? The former speaker's surge makes no sense.
By Conor Friedersdorf
Dec 2 2011, 2:15 PM ET 24

Here's a fun game. Let's think of all the stuff conservatives say they hated about George W. Bush's time in office.

No Child Left Behind? Newt Gingrich supported it.

Medicare Part D, the new prescription drug entitlement? Newt Gingrich favored it.

TARP? Newt Gingrich cheered for it.

The Harriet Miers nomination? Newt Gingrich predicted success.

Comprehensive immigration reform? Newt Gingrich endorsed it.

Then there's "the surge," Bush's Iraq war turnaround strategy that conservatives love to laud. Gingrich opposed that.

So what gives?

The former House speaker's surge makes no sense. The conservative base that was energized partly by fatigue at eight years of Bush missteps is rallying around the candidate who favored them all. What a bizarre turn.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/gingrich-backed-everything-the-right-hated-about-the-bush-years/249390/

They Thought They Were Free

An excerpt from
They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was 'expected to' participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. 'One had no time to think. There was so much going on.'"

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your 'little men,' your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about­we were decent people­and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it­please try to believe me­unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic German' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice­'Resist the beginnings' and 'Consider the end.' But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

"Your 'little men,' your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something­but then it was too late."

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?­Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to­to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked­if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in­your nation, your people­is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or 'adjust' your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn't an anti-Nazi. He was just­a judge. In '42 or '43, early '43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an 'Aryan' woman. This was 'race injury,' something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a 'nonracial' offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party 'processing' which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the 'nonracial' charge, in the judge's opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."

"And the judge?"

"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience­a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That's how I heard about it.) After the '44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don't know."

I said nothing.

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was 'defeatism.' You assumed that there were lists of those who would be 'dealt with' later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a 'victory orgy' to 'take care of' those who thought that their 'treasonable attitude' had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

"Once the war began, the government could do anything 'necessary' to win it; so it was with the 'final solution of the Jewish problem,' which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its 'necessities' gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."

Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 166-73 of They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press. (Footnotes and other references included in the book may have been removed from this online version of the text.)

Milton Mayer

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

©1955, 1966, 368 pages

Paper $22.00 ISBN: 978-0-226-51192-4

For information on purchasing the book­from bookstores or here online­please go to the webpage for They Thought They Were Free.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

Animal Rights Activists Threaten to Poison Chinese Restaurants in Toronto

http://eater.com/archives/2011/12/02/animal-rights-group-threatens-to-poison-chinese-restaurants-in-toronto.php

 

 

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"The Restroom Door Said, 'Gentlemen'"

http://www.boortz.com/funny/restroom_door/

 

 

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In Soviet Russia, Pants Poop You?

This is velly putin punny.

http://puns.icanhascheezburger.com/2011/12/01/funny-puns-russian-poop-joke/

 

 

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