My Mother's Death

It was the 35th anniversary of my mother's death last week. I was 23 and my sister was 13. My mother was 47. My mother's early death was a shock to the whole family and all our friends. Nobody expected it. In the United States if you are white, middle class and young you don't think that something like that can happen.

I have never completely gotten over it. The affect of her death on my father and sister has probably been the reason I have never completely moved on. I still am sorrowfully amazed how her death was able to completely unravel my father. And what my father emotionally did to my sister.

Before her death I had thought my father was emotionally stronger than my mother.... looks can be deceiving.

I think about parents who loose young one's. I think how much more terrible the pain must be for them. I now grieve for any parent who looses a child.

Life does have a way of renewing itself though. My stepson, whom I didn't know for many years after my mother's death, was born four days after her death.

The Coming Liberal Thugocracy - 2

Written by Jack Kelly, Thursday, 07 May 2009

President Hussein Obama's "car czar" has no experience in the automobile industry, and is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly paying kickbacks to obtain New York state pension business. A former journalist turned investment banker and Democrat party fund-raiser, Steven Rattner also was involved in a deal with Cerebrus Capital Management, the hedge fund which owns most of Chrysler, which made other Chrysler investors wonder if Mr. Rattner could decide without bias how the government should aid the auto firm.

They need wonder no longer. Mr. Rattner proposed a deal that would reward the United Auto Workers at the expense of the people who loaned Chrysler money, and attempted to bully bondholders into accepting it. The deal would have given bondholders about 30 cents on the dollar for their secured debts while giving UAW retirees about 50 cents on their unsecured debts.

"This of course is a violation of one of the basic principles of bankruptcy law, which is that secured creditors -- those who have lent money only on the contractual promise that if the debt was unpaid they'd get specific property back -- get paid off before unsecured creditors get anything," noted columnist Michael Barone.

In a radio interview, Tom Lauria, an attorney for several of the bondholders said: "One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House, and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight."

The White House denied it had made threats, but two other participants in the negotiations told the Business Insider that "conversations with administration officials left them expecting that they would be politically targeted."

Both told the Business Insider they'd voted for Mr. Obama. The client of Mr. Lauria's that was bullied into submission was Perella Weinberg, the firm that made White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel rich.

All of Chrysler's creditors who'd accepted TARP funds accepted the deal, but several firms which hadn't taken government money rejected it, forcing Chrysler to file for bankruptcy protection April 30. President Obama and other Democrats ascribed the rejection to "greed." But they have that exactly backward.

"Think carefully about what's happening here," Mr. Barone said. "The White House...is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democrat Party."

Why should the UAW, which shares responsibility with Chrysler's management for running the company into the ground, be rewarded at the expense of the bondholders, without whose funds the doors at Chrysler would have been shut long ago? The bondholders represent pension funds on which workers who are not responsible for bankrupting Chrysler depend for their retirement.

Bailing out the UAW at the expense of the law may not be such a good deal for unions in the long run. Businesses need to borrow money. But, Mr. Barone asked, "Who is going to buy bonds from unionized companies if the government is going to take their money away and give it to the union?"

The shakedown of Chrysler bonholders is "an episode of Gangster Government," says Mr. Barone. It isn't just unionized companies that could suffer from the Obama administration's cavalier attitude toward the rights of bondholders. The Treasury department has to sell several trillion dollars worth of bonds to fund the president's massive spending.

"Will the White House treat Treasury bondholders better than they've treated Chrysler bondholders?" asks law professor Glenn Reynolds. The Chinese government, the largest foreign purchaser of Treasury securities, evidently doesn't think so. Treasury data for January and February indicate the Chinese have cut back substantially on their purchase of bonds. If those bonds go unsold, it isn't only Chrysler and General Motors who face bankruptcy.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Keeping Track of Bidens Gaffes

Joe Biden has never been accused of being shy. Next to Chuckey Shumer there was nobody in the US Senate who could be more dangerous if you got between him and a TV camera. But now with the TV camera's really on him it is becoming very apparent that Joe doesn't agree with Barack Obama on many issues and Joe Biden just continually gets it wrong. Remember Al Gore when he said he invented the internet? Well, Joe hasn't been quoted as saying anything that preposterous... but he still has time.

In May of 2009, Biden "said a young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment." The existence of this bunder was a closely held national secret and Joe might have commited a felony talking about it.

May 4,2009 (Aprox.) Joe told Katie Couric “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”
On March 13, 2009, Biden addressed a former Senate colleague by saying, "An hour late, oh give me a f**king break," after he arrived on Amtrak at Union Station in Washington, D.C. The vice president's expletive was caught on a live microphone.

During a Feb. 25, 2009, interview on CBS' "Early Show," Biden encouraged viewers to visit a government-run Web site that tracks stimulus spending. When asked for the site's web address, Biden could not remember the site's "number." "You know, I'm embarrassed. Do you know the Web site number?" he asked an aide standing out of view. "I should have it in front of me and I don't. I'm actually embarrassed."

At a Jan. 30, 2009, swearing-in ceremony of senior White House staff, Biden mocked Chief Justice John Roberts for his presidential oath blunder on Inauguration Day. "Am I doing this again?" Biden said, after Obama asked him to administer the oath. When Biden was told the swearing-in was for senior staff -- and not cabinet members -- the vice president quipped, "My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts," prompting a stern nudge from Obama.

On Inauguration Day, Jan. 20 2009, Biden misspoke when he told a cheering crowd of supporters, "Jill and I had the great honor of standing on that stage, looking across at one of the great justices, Justice Stewart." Justice John Paul Stevens -- not Stewart -- swore Biden in as vice president.

When criticizing former GOP nominee John McCain in Athens, Ohio, on Oct. 15, 2008, Biden said, "Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs."

Sep 22, 08. Uncle Joe infers his helicopter was forced down by the Taliban or Al Qaeda. "The superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down...John McCain wants to know where Bin Laden and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where. That's where Al Qaeda is. That's where Bin Laden is. It's not in the country of Iraq."

Sep 23, 08. Biden supports clean coal for China, but not for the United States. "No coal plants here in America," he said. "Build them, if they're going to build them, over there. Make them clean." However, Obama is for clean coal!

In a Sept. 22, 2008, CBS interview, Biden misspoke when he said Franklin D. Roosevelt was president when the stock market crashed in 1929. "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened," he said. "Herbert Hoover -- not Roosevelt -- was president in 1929, and television had not yet been invented in 1929."

During a Sept. 12, 2008, speech in Columbia, Mo., Biden called for Missouri State Sen. Chuck Graham, who is wheelchair-bound, to "stand up." "Oh, God love ya," Biden said, after realizing his mistake. "What am I talking about?"

At a Sept. 10, 2008, town hall meeting in Nashua, N.H., Biden said, "Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me."

Biden mistakenly referred to Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the "lieutenant governor" of her state during a town hall meeting on Sept. 4, 2008 at George Mason University in Manassas, Va. "I heard a very, by the way I mean this sincerely, a very strong and a very good political speech from a lieutenant governorof Alaska who I think is going to be very formidable, very formidable not only in the campaign but in the debate," Biden said.

Biden said he was running for president -- not vice president -- during a Sept. 1, 2008, roundtable discussion in Scranton, Pa. "Today is the moment for me as a United States senator running for president to put aside the national politics and focus on what's happening down there," Biden said.

Biden referred to John McCain as "George" during his vice presidential acceptance speech on Aug. 27, 2008, at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Co. "Freudian slip, folks, Freudian slip," he explained.

Biden confused army brigades with battalions when speaking about Obama's plan for sending troops to Afghanistan. "Or should we trust Barack Obama, who more than a year ago called for sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan?"

During his first campaign rally with Obama as his vice presidential running mate on Aug. 23, 2008, Biden introduced Obama by saying, "A man I'm proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next President of the United States -- Barack America!"

On Jan. 31, 2007 -- the day Biden announced his presidential bid -- the Delaware Senator was roundly criticized for calling Obama "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."