The mob moves in

Now that the government has fixed it so the numbers we get from its own departments are thoroughly cooked, it’s time to deal with the ones coming from the private sector.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has notified Standard & Poor’s that civil charges may be filed against the credit-ratings firm for its 2007 grading of a high-risk securities deal.

Bill Quick:

This is just Chicago Way style payback for S&P daring to downgrade the US thanks to Barry Obama’s socialist spending spree.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 15:05:07 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 85 words, total size 1 kb.

Wishes for a new, good year

To all my Jewish friends (even especially the ones who drive me crazy!).

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 23:51:30 GMT | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 43 words, total size 1 kb.

Bride of “Why government costs so much”

Associated Press:

...The Energy Department has approved two loan guarantees worth more than $1billion for solar energy projects in Nevada and Arizona..., under the same program that paid for a $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., a now-bankrupt solar panel maker...

What could possibly go wrong?


UPDATE (110929 14:40):  Well, possibly this?

Of that $1 billion in guarantees, $737 million went to "Tonopah Solar,” a subsidiary of a California-based company named SolarReserve.  Which has an "investment partner” called PCG.  Whose number-two man just happens to be Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law.

Nothing like keeping it all in the family.

(Update rewritten from this report by Jim Hoft, via American Glob via the invaluable AOS sidebar.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:51:45 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 124 words, total size 4 kb.

By his “friends” you shall know him

New York Post:

JP Morgan honcho Jamie Dimon, once a "fat cat” ally of President Obama, seems to have strayed to Republican contender Mitt Romney.

Dimon, a lifelong Democrat who was rumored to be on Obama’s short list for treasury secretary before he settled on Tim Geithner, met privately with Romney on Tuesday morning before a fund-raiser at Brasserie 8¹/2 hosted by Highbridge Capital, a JPMorgan-owned hedge fund.

Unsurprising.  After all, the well-being of "lifelong Democrats” and their too-big-to-fail crony corporations is always an important concern for the RINO Republicans.  If Romney wasn’t one of them, he’d have had enough sense to not get caught anywhere near that crowd.

Elsewhere, related:

(Post story via Insty.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:48:06 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 151 words, total size 3 kb.

Trial balloon?

North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue says the times are too grave for us to indulge in that "election” stuff:

You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things.  I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover.  I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.

Spokesman Chris Mackey later said the governor was "...obviously using hyperbole to highlight what we can all agree is a serious problem...” (well, what else would he say?), but witnesses report "her tone was level and she asked others to support her on the idea.”  Anybody have a recording?  (UPDATE: Jeff does!)

Every day in every way, Glenn Beck sounds less crazy.  Which is not necessarily a Good Thing.

Elsewhere:

More (110928 14:30):
Oh, THAT Explains It  Dept:
(Via Daily Caller via Ace. New Republic link HT: Jeff.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:45:31 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 258 words, total size 6 kb.

Connection? What connection?

From today’s Ace Of Spades sidebar:

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 15:33:24 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 184 words, total size 3 kb.

Son of “Why government costs so much”

Associated Press:

The federal government has doled out more than $600 million in benefit payments to dead people over the past five years...

But wait, there’s more!

More than 89,000 stimulus payments [not the same thing]... went to people who were either dead [$18 million] or in prison [$4.3 million]...

You may call it fraud.  Our politician friends probably call it "taking care of the constituency.”

(Via:  Radley)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 18:26:27 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 65 words, total size 2 kb.

“Arrr-r-r-Roger, tower?”

What, you mean it’s not "Talk Like a Pilot Day”?

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:41:45 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

Today’s Crony Capitalist update

Michelle Malkin:

In a normal, free-market environment, of course, business executives take their cue from customers — not from the East Wing. [link added - O.G.]

But this is no normal, free-market environment.

And, I might add, Darden Restaurants is no normal restaurant chain.

At a time when most food service providers are struggling under the weight of increased taxes, health care mandates, and regulations, Darden Restaurants just happens to be one of the few and fortunate businesses to obtain one of those coveted Obamacare waivers.

(The Darden brands, just in case you’re interested: Olive Garden, Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze and Seasons 52.)

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal quotes Jeff Immelt:

Speaking at an event in New York, GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt said he sees "good, decent economic growth everywhere.”

As to whether Mr. Immelt expects any of that "growing” to include GE’s operations in the U.S... the article doesn’t say.

Oh, guess which well-connected Wall Street insider firm was there "helping” now-bankrupt Solyndra get that $535 million DOE loan guarantee?

And guess how much of that $535 mill the taxpayers aren’t likely to recover:

...bankrupt Solyndra will retain Imperial Capital at the cost of $150,000 per month (this is cash that is immediately leaving the estate, thus minimizing recoveries to US taxpayers), a $1 million confirmation fee, a $1 million sale fee (the two are not exclusive), a 1%/3%/5% financing fee (i.e., Imperial arranges follow through financing, although good luck with that), and so on. In other news, should this bankruptcy stretch for more than the usual 1 year period from filing to emergence, US taxpayers will be on the hook for another roughly $3 million, in order to hire a banker whose ultimate value added will be an "orderly" liquidation of the company.

You know what they say: A million here, a million there, and sooner or later there’s no money left...

(Malkin via DP, Goldman via Glenn)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:53:37 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 320 words, total size 5 kb.

The Journal plays the race card

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal headed up its "Review & Outlook” column with an editorial titled Republican Overregulation [no longer on web]. In their latest trip around the track aboard the paper’s pro-massive-immigration hobbyhorse, the Journal editors offered up this statement:

Republicans claim they oppose only illegal immigration but the truth is that many have grown hostile to all immigration.

Now although I don’t pretend to speak for all Republicans (or even "many” of them), and although the only pets around my house are cats, I can still spot a dogwhistle when I see one.

While the editors didn’t continue, the tone of the piece leaves little doubt that "...hostile to all immigrants so shut up, you bunch of ra-a-a-a-cists!” was their intent here.

And (again) although I don’t pretend to speak for all Republicans (or even "many” of them), and although I remain without the editors’ insights concerning "the truth,” I can say that, at least as far as I and the Republicans who I know are concerned, the Journal is full of it.

And while at times I may seem weary of immigration altogether, that has a lot  to do with our political establishment’s (and its media enablers’) total lack of interest in doing anything to actually address the problems produced by the illegals and their presence in my country.

And isn’t it interesting... that when they don’t get what they want, the Gentry "Conservatives” sound so very much like the Gentry Liberals.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:23:24 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 245 words, total size 2 kb.