Existing home sales jump sharply

How well to you think the media will respond to this? Is Wall Street listening?

Seeing as how everything bad that has happened to the economy has been blamed on housing, this news should be shouted from the rooftop. My guess? It won't.

Racism among Obama's supporters.

Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington demands ("President Obama will have debts to pay") that if Barack Obama is elected, he must carry out a "black agenda." Said she:

...[H]e will step into the Oval Office courtesy of overwhelming turnouts dug out of the red hills of Georgia and the gritty concrete of Newark.

There will be a debt to pay.

Amazing. We have been constantly reminded that the Obama campaign has been devoid of "race." The PBS Newshour tonight spent an entire segment analyzing just how large a factor white racism has played in the election. (The panel seemed to conclude that it was a "second tier" factor.) Overlooked was a discussion about how important black racism has played in the election. Judging by Washington's demand, it has played a big factor in the minds of some of his supporters.

Obama campaign selling Chicago election night coverage packages to news outlets

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. The Obama campaign is demanding that the media pay for where they sit to cover him on election night. Those not willing to cough up are literally left out in the cold.

Lynn Sweet at the Chicago Sun-Times calls it "an outrageous pay to play plan that caters to national elite outlets with deep pockets." I hope she covers the story election night to tell us which elite outlets cave in to this unusual, if not outrageous, demand.

ACORN ain't ready for vote fraud

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Haven’t those dummies from ACORN ever heard of roundtabling?

The liberal activist group was easily caught by election officials in Lake County (Ind.) for turning in more than 2,000 voter registration forms, out of more than 5,000, that were called bogus. The give-away to the brazen fakery was the fact that so many of the signatures were identical. Application after application in the same handwriting.

How stupid can anyone be?

Didn’t they know about roundtabling, a time-honored Chicago machine practice at which a bunch of people sitting at tables pass around voter registration cards, nominating petitions or other forms of public documents so at least their bogus signatures didn’t all look the same on the same document?

Read more at the Chicago Daily Observer

The aura of Mr. Smooth

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Aura: (n.) A general impression produced by a predominant quality or characteristic: air, ambience, atmosphere, feel, feeling, mood, tone.

A single word explains why Barack Obama might be president. Aura perfectly describes the Democratic candidate. An aura, the dictionary says, is the distinctive, but intangible air that surrounds a person. It derives from the ancient Greek, meaning breath or gentle breeze. I particularly like the third definition, which says an aura is "the supposed emanation surrounding the body of a living creature, viewed by mystics, spiritualists and some practitioners of complementary medicine as the essence of the individual and allegedly discernible by people with special sensibilities."

Those of us with below-average sensibilities can only ponder how Obama has managed to establish a cult of personality the way no other presidential candidate has, except perhaps John F. Kennedy. Yes, Obama says what many Americans want to hear and how they want to hear it. But something is creepy about how Americans are running to embrace what is essentially a method. As ethereal as Obama's aura might be, nothing in the Republican quiver can fight it. Past or present affiliations—be they with violent radicals, racist ministers, convicted fixers and the corrupt Chicago political machine—can't fight the aura.

Obama's aura overcomes his inexperience, his most liberal voting record and his outright deceptions (e.g. reneging on his pledge to take public campaign financing, and thereby limiting his campaign advertising).

We could have 10 more presidential debates over the differences between Obama and John McCain on foreign policy, Immigration, the economy, government ethics and so on, but it wouldn't matter. Intricate policy differences between the two don't matter, because only aura counts. Because of his aura, Obama can engage in a presidential debate, and his aloofness and one-note message of "change" will be misinterpreted by burbling commentators as thoughtful, calm and intelligent discourse. His aura explains why his handlers can get away with slamming McCain for his allegedly negative campaigning, even at times when he is simply disagreeing with Obama's policies.

We are about to elect a president because of how he makes us feel, not how he makes us think.

That says a bundle about an undemanding electorate. Yes, Obama has policies, and he enunciates them eloquently, and a lot of people support them; but notice is mostly taken of his delivery, not of his substance. Voters, never, ever have elected a president with policies this far to the left; rare, indeed, is the senator or congressman who is further left. (Note to conservatives: Stop calling Obama a socialist. It doesn't do your cause any good, and besides, he isn't, in the strict Marxist definition of the state owning the means of production. Obama is just a Hyde Park liberal, a sui generis kind of extreme leftist who uses words like "sui generis." Talk, instead, about how McCain is mainstream. Although, I also doubt that McCain's more centrist positions can stand up to aura either.)

Having aura is fine, but electing a president based on whether he or she possesses it shows curious understanding of how democracy is supposed to work.

Yes, tens of millions of Americans will feel wonderful when Obama is elected and maybe the stock market, the housing market and the rest of the economy will boom from that good feeling. I hope so, because that's just about what has been guaranteed by a vote for Obama, and I can't wait.

But there's this. After the aura has burned away—like the early-morning summer mist disappears before a rising sun—the president needs to make tough, on-the-run and wise decisions. It is then when a president's basic inclinations surface, about whether to involve the government more in your life, take more of your money or, in the face of our enemies, speak softy and carry a little stick. And then, the pathological definition of aura comes into play: a sensation, as of a cold breeze or a bright light, that precedes the onset of certain disorders, such as an epileptic seizure or an attack of migraine.

Or, more precisely, an attack of a real, actual problem that requires something more than Mr. Smooth.

A new look at Democratic class warfare

The Rich Support McCain, the Super-Rich Support Obama

It's the work of the political handlers, not of intelligent life

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

John McCain's political advisers must have been astonished by the number of journalists asleep at the switch when the Republican presidential candidate dropped his bombshell during last week's presidential debate with Democrat Barack Obama.

Under McCain's American Homeownership Resurgence Plan, the government would buy mortgages directly from homeowners who were falling behind in their payments and replace them with, as his Web site says, "manageable, fixed-rate mortgages that will keep families in their homes." It would only cost another $300 billion or so, his handlers later explained. Where do I sign up?

In post-debate media confabulations, few commentators appeared to pick up on how a Republican was proposing the kind of huge, expensive and intrusive government program that would make GOP eyeballs spin if a Democrat had come up with the same buy-me-some-votes idea. In my channel surfing, only a Fortune magazine editor on one of the debate postmortems was aghast, noting that the Republican "small government" tradition had just capsized and sunk.

Abandoning long-held beliefs is what happens in an economic panic. I can imagine it now, how McCain's political advisers were desperate to come up with something, anything, that would make their candidate look like he had the definitive economic plan, something more than dishing out up to $700 billion to rescue banks, Wall Street and derivatives magicians.

The theory was probably something like: "Let's look like we're bypassing all those crooks by giving the money directly to homeowners. What could be more Main Street than that?"

What better way to trump Obama's lead with airheads who figure that "change" is the all-purpose elixir for every ill. It would "position" McCain as the advocate for the regular guy and force Obama into the unfamiliar position of being for the "fat cats" on Wall Street.

Nice, but the problem was that the media barely noticed. Maybe they would have paid more attention if Obama had come up with the plan. Obama last week offered a plan (I suppose in response to McCain's), as The Wall Street Journal put it, "to temporarily provide low-interest loans to struggling businesses by using existing structures already in place through the Small Business Administration," whatever that means. Obama also supports allowing elders to delay withdrawals from their 401(k) retirement plans beyond age 701/2. Democrats also are talking about passing a new economic stimulus package in the lame duck Congress after the election because, I guess, the last package worked so well.

Even McCain's handlers admit the $300 billion for his rescue plan is a lot of money so maybe it could be taken out of the $700 billion bailout already passed. Or maybe the earlier bailout of Bear Stearns. Or the Hope for Homeowners Act. Bet you already forgot about that one, even though it was enacted only eight weeks ago. (It gives distressed homeowners a chance to cancel their mortgage and replace it with a 30-year, fixed-rate loan up to 90 percent of the current fair market value, all insured by the Federal Housing Administration for up to $300 billion over the next three years. And doesn't that sound familiar?)

The number of these schemes is getting downright creepy. There are so many that guessing that some of them will be unnecessary, conflicting or just downright damaging to the economy is irresistible.

The debates and campaigns have reduced themselves to the mere memorization of talking points concocted by handlers, which is why the last debate was such a yawn.

Listen handlers, we've got your talking points memorized. If we want any more thoughts out of you, we'll squeeze your heads and see what comes out your ears. It's probably too late to fire all the handlers and let the candidates be whoever they are. Although, it might be just the kind of stimulus the public needs to pull us out of our despondency.

Sheesh, why not call in the FBI too?

Video shows coach shoving 11-year-old football player; parents want to file assault charge; underwear in knots.

America's big economic flimflam

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The $700 billion financial bailout may be the biggest flimflam ever pulled on the American public. It has all the earmarks of a good con: Bankers and assorted Wall Street grifters will make off with hundreds of billions of dollars, abetted by Washington politicians, while we get stuck with the tab.

We can thank Wells Fargo & Co, a big Western bank, for exposing this swindle for what it was by agreeing to buy Wachovia Corp., a troubled Eastern bank, thereby rescuing it from a government-arranged shotgun marriage with Citigroup Inc.

We need to step back for a moment to appreciate Wells Fargo's good deed. Start at the beginning: Deflation in home prices caused the value of mortgages (and their derivatives) held by banks (and other investors) to likewise lose value. Not knowing their "real" value, these banks and other lenders aren't willing to risk lending money to anyone—consumers, businesses or other banks. Thus, the credit market has "locked up."

We're told the only way out is for the government to cough up $700 billion, which supposedly will allow banks and the others to somehow put a value on their diminished assets and, thus, get back to the business of lending. Wells Fargo discredited that scenario. It did exactly what Washington said couldn't be done: It put a value on a failing bank, Wachovia: $15.1 billion.

In effect, Wells Fargo bet its money on the value of Wachovia's portfolio of toxic mortgages, something Wall Street said couldn't happen until the bailout deal was struck. Actually, the Wells Fargo deal was done before the bailout and it came without government involvement or taxpayers' money, unlike the proposed Citigroup deal.

This needs emphasis: The government, through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., planned to put taxpayers into the middle of a risky and costly deal that the private sector—Wells Fargo—was willing to undertake on its own. Does this mean that government should have done nothing to help resolve the credit crunch? No, it only means that the government's panic-driven bailout might not have been the best way to do things, as 100 of the nation's top economists warned.

Only time will tell if, as the economists asserted, the bailout is unfair, too ambiguous and a drag on capital markets for decades to come. One thing we do know, however, is that before the bailout was enacted on Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average was up more than 300 points, supposedly in anticipation of its enactment, but after the House sealed the deal, the index fell 157 points, a swing of more than 400 points. Oops. Wall Street sages suddenly opined that the "market" considered the $700 billion bailout to be no big deal after all, because the life preserver may be arriving too late.

This is curious, because there's plenty of cash to lend; the nation's money supply hasn't shrunk, it has expanded. Already, we're seeing stirrings in the private sector—no thanks to the bailout—that say now is a good time to gobble up bargains. Witness tycoon Warren Buffett's big investments in GE and Goldman Sachs. And we never know when the logjam of pent-up demand for housing will break.

Here's the supreme irony of the bailout: Easy credit, low interest rates and Wall Street legerdemain launched us into this mess. The cure, we're told, is more of the same: easy credit, made possible by the accounting hocus pocus of the bailout, for the truly unworthy. Plus another $110 billion in earmarks for lawmakers, exactly what everyone says is bad. And the source of all this dough? Borrowed from, among others, foreign purchasers of Treasury notes, and paid back by us. And if we can't borrow enough, we'll just print more money. The cure for bad credit is, well, more bad credit. Flimflam hardly describes it.

The Bailout: Recommended Reading

Here's a good primer, clearly written, on the financial bailout. It also is notable for its honesty, in that the author freely admits that he can't predict the future, as so many have.

Ebert, again

Roger Ebert is honked, personally insulted it appears, because McCain didn't look at Obama during the debate. Gee, Roger, if I thought that where McCain looked was important enough to devote an entire column to, I would have counted number of times that Obama said, "Uh."

And the public wins!

Not so fast on that bailout package

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The American public on Monday stuck it to the "knowledgeable and sophisticated" elites who warned that without the $700 billion federal financial bailout plan all hell would break loose.

The House vote, 228-205, was a rejection, for better or worse, by "regular Americans" of the Hobson's choice presented to them by the upper echelons of government, politics, Wall Street, media and others.

Either:

Write a blank check for $700 billion, $350 billion or whatever, in the most drastic U.S. government intrusion into the private sector perhaps ever, or at least since the Great Depression, with unknown consequences; or, live through another Great Depression, with unemployment of "20 percent," loss of homes and other horrors.

We who hesitate are lost. On top of that, the public was asked to pick its poison immediately, without congressional hearings, extensive public debate or any other accouterments of a democratic republic. The public was required to accept the edict. No look before you leap.

That an upstart public would flood Congress and the administration with unscripted, immediate and overwhelmingly negative reaction was, itself, considered a disaster of unprecedented proportions. You could read in the faces of the Wall Street types on CNBC and elsewhere their astonishment that anyone would dare defy their wisdom. Jim Cramer, the popular stock guru, expressed it best when he stated that the folks who opposed the deal are "not knowledgeable or sophisticated." As if everyone who disagreed with him is stupid.

Rant and rave all they want about how the 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans who voted against the package were cowardly hacks genuflecting to the populist rabble, the truth is their vote was courageous. They are the ones taking the risk in a belief that a more sensible, middle-ground position can be worked out; they are putting their chips on the belief that the nation won't go belly up by stopping for a moment to have more debate.

They aren't the ones who dumped a 110-page bill on top of everyone the night before the vote. After the vote, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of her gang accused the Republicans of being ideologues who couldn't depart from harebrained, free-market notions, while seeming to forget that 95 members of her own caucus would be guilty of the same sin. This is the same Nancy Pelosi who after the vote bizarrely blamed Republicans for a failure of bipartisanship, when, during the debate leading up to the vote, she let loose with a nasty partisan attack totally inappropriate for the quality of the debate. You had to see it to believe it: There was rational debate on the House floor, indeed in a spirit of bipartisanship, and then she comes along blaming President George W. Bush for everything.

It sure put a damper on the debate. But if turned off Republicans were mad enough to switch votes from aye to a nay just for that reason, Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who managed the legislation, was right: Putting personal affront ahead of the national good is ridiculous.

Easy for me to take shots from the sidelines; as much as I dislike the legislation, I might have voted for it, because I'd be scared stiff about the consequences of no bailout. But in the few short days of debate, I also know that other possible routes are available for addressing the "seizing up" of the credit markets. Among them are accounting-rules changes that would allow banks to keep good mortgages on their books at their face value, instead of deeply writing off their value, thereby strangling the ability of banks to make loans.

How about the involvement of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which in the past week managed to salvage the assets of two major financial institutions without endangering a dollar of taxpayers' money?

So, rack up another congressional failure in what seems to me to be the most unproductive legislative session in my memory. Here's a Congress whose public approval ratings are lower even than Bush's. The markets, of course, will spin wildly out of sight, offended by this public uprising. But things will settle down, Congress will work it out. Take the word of someone who don't know nothing.

Read more comments on this column at RealClearPolitics

Blame the Democrats

Here is a video of Democrats condemning Republican efforts to impose more stringent regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation

That's 25 times more than what the U.S. Geological Service previously estimated. (The details are here)

Yeah, but what will threatened rattlesnakes say?

Court blocks guv’s health care expansion

(AP) — An Illinois appellate court on Friday blocked Gov. Rod Blagojevich's attempt to expand a state-funded health care program, noting that administration officials don't know who they've signed up or even where the money is that they've collected in insurance premiums. [Emphasis added]

Read the latest full story about the governor's screwball plan.

Mary Mitchell’s Ophidian World

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, forever on guard against the white racism she’s expecting to spring troll-like from its ubiquitous hiding places, has managed again to twist a few facts to suit her nasty bigotry.

In her latest exercise in tedium, she cited an AP-Yahoo News poll that concludes that Barack Obama’s race could cost him “six percentage points—enough for him to lose in a closely contested race.”

I’m not sure what poll Mitchell is reading, since when I look at the one* she seems to be citing, I see different results.

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Tollway chief follows the game plan

The executive director of the Illinois Tollway has resigned to take a job with--oh no, not again--a big tollway contractor.

No one here, of course, should be surprised, because that's how things are done in Chicago: Hand out some huge government contracts and find yourself in demand later for a high-paying job.

The executive director, Brian McPartlin, who came to head the tollway under the auspices of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is joining Chicago-based McDonough Associates, an engineering and architectural firm, as vice president. There he will work for James McDonough who rose to the head of the firm after serving--no surprise here either--as chairman of the CTA. Then, the firm was known as Murphy Engineering, which was--guess what?--a big, politically connected contractor.

That was more than 30 years ago. Some things never change.

Campbell Brown: Free Sarah Palin: The Swamp

CNN anchor Campbell Brown got it right: The McCain campaign should unleash Sarah Palin. See her comments here. Even Rush Limbaugh says the campaign should let Palin be Palin. Fie on those political consultants that are making her look like a coward.

Hold on: Maybe the economy can wait

Never has the United States had to make such a momentous decision so quickly, except on more memorable dates such as December 7, 1941 or September 11, 2001. Is this really that urgent?

Our betters tell us that the “financial meltdown” leaves us only two choices: Either put this nation in hock in unspeakable amounts to who-knows-whom for how long. Or bring on another Depression. And we must pick our poison right now -- no looking for reasonable alternatives. All the key players agree that we’ve got no time to spare; all us bit players can’t fully understand why.

Read more in Human Events

Who's right on home prices?

What if Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is wrong about home prices, and the market is right?