Obligatory.

The tough-guy bravado wears ever thinner over time but I don’t blame him for being irritated at a smear this nasty. He wants to hold a referendum on gay marriage and therefore he’s … George Wallace? What? The punchline is that Christie’s pushing the referendum not because he’s militantly opposed to gays getting married and [...]

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92 percent?

Granted, granted, their sample is a ludicrous 44% Democrat and 25% Republican. And yes, it’s true that this guy is recycling his talking points from one speech to the next, year after wearying year. But hey: Last year just 83 percent approved of his SOTU remarks. He’s up nearly 10 points this time go round. [...]

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The rise of independents, or just the disgusted?

You know that Democrats and Republicans have a problem when the question becomes: Which of the two major political parties has turned off more voters since the 2008 elections?  As it turns out, it’s the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean the Republicans have gained: More than 2.5 million voters have left the Democratic and Republican [...]

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Scrutiny.

“After his speech, the Texas congressman took questions. The first was from a woman who immediately expressed her adoration. ‘I am actually a Democrat and I am in love with you,” Michelle Godez-Schilling told Paul to cheers from the crowd. “The candidate put his hands on his face as if he was embarrassed before Godez-Schilling [...]

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Big deal.

Democrats had to have a plan to tie all Republican candidates to that crazy notion floated by Paul Ryan to transform Medicare into a premium-support plan, an idea so radical that no Democrat or even sane person could possibly support.  Why, even Newt Gingrich called it “right-wing social engineering”!  Barack Obama could get up on [...]

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Under pressure.

Jon Corzine isn’t the only Democrat heading down Pennsylvania Avenue for a Congressional grilling today.  Attorney General Eric Holder will also appear today to answer questions about Operation Fast and Furious in the House at 10 am ET today.  Politico reports that the pressure has been getting to Holder lately: Holder will be back on [...]

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"You are president of the damn United States"

We’re seeing a number of Democrats (and doubtless a couple of Republicans as well) preparing to pack up their things and go home when their current terms end. A variety of reasons are given, each valid in their own way. Some are getting on in years and looking forward to retirement and spending more time [...]

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Republican obstructionism.

Let no Democrat anywhere ever say again that Republican obstructionism is to blame for the inaction of Congress and the president on jobs. Not only has the Republican House of Representatives passed 15 of its own jobs bills, but, today, the House also passed part of the president’s American Jobs Act, according to The Washington [...]

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Necessity.

Forget Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio.  Public-employee unions have a new bete noire to demonize, another governor threatening to challenge their power — and the source of their power.  Only this time, it’s not a Republican, but a Democrat from one of the bluest states in the nation: Gov. Jerry Brown [...]

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And guess where she said it?

Let’s see … would this be the same woman who accused Republicans of wanting to “literally drag us back to Jim Crow days“?  The same Democrat who said that a failure to agree with Democrats on spending amounted to something “almost like dictatorship“?  The member of Congress who described Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform as “throw [...]

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"I would use this as a way of going after Democrats."

If Republicans want to push even more Democrats out of Congress next year, one Democrat has suggested a strategy to succeed. The Hill reports that Blue Dog Democrats have begun to worry that Republicans will win the 2012 debate by backing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, especially with an electorate so skeptical of [...]

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Momentum.

Tomorrow, West Virginia voters go to the polls to choose their next governor in a special election necessitated by Joe Manchin’s election to the Senate last year.  Manchin won that seat as a popular Democrat in a conservative, which the Senate president and interim governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, hoped would suffice to keep the seat [...]

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Remember the Senate.

People in Massachusetts like Sen. Scott Brown. More than 50 percent of his constituents have a favorable opinion of him and just 29 percent have an unfavorable view. But that doesn’t mean they’ll reelect him. To do that, they’d have to overcome, once again, their deeply entrenched tendency to vote for whatever Democrat happens to [...]

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Republicans, on the other hand ...

If Barack Obama won his 2008 election based on voter enthusiasm, then he’s got a very, very big problem rolling into next year.  According to Gallup, enthusiasm among Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents has dropped to a decade-long low: In thinking about the 2012 presidential election, 45% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic say they [...]

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What could go wrong?

The News-Observer claims in their headline that she was “joking” but I think that’s because they can’t quite believe a sitting governor would be so stupid as to say this publicly. In fact, in the story itself they note, “It’s unclear whether Perdue, a Democrat, is serious — but her tone was level and she [...]

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The Senate's too busy with vacation.

The House reportedly struggled to find a Democrat sponsor for the president’s exposed and vulnerable jobs package, eventually finding a savior in Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), who represents one of the safest of safe districts. Nor will the Republican-run House likely take up the legislation anytime soon. But who would have expected the president’s bill [...]

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Well ... it is now.

Republicans won two House seats in a special election last night.  One, in Nevada, had been a relatively safe district, and Republican Mark Amodei cruised to victory over Democrat Kate Marshall as expected.  Also as predicted, Republican Bob Turner won a six-point victory over Democrat David Weprin in NY-09, a Congressional district in the heart [...]

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And social issues might be why.

Former President Bill Clinton and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recorded robo-calls to run today and tomorrow to express support for Democrat David Weprin in Weprin’s race against Republican Bob Turner to replace disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner in New York’s 9th Congressional district. The Daily Caller reports the content of the calls: “I’ve known David [...]

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Panic.

Granted, by NYC standards, this isn’t a Democratic stronghold. Kerry and Obama both won it, of course, but their share of the vote was only in the mid-50s. And granted, even if the GOP pulls out a win on Tuesday night, we’re probably not going to hold this seat in November. Weprin, the Democrat, is [...]

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anti-weiner

The seat in New York’s Ninth Congressional District vacated by Anthony Weiner is due to have a new occupant in less than two weeks. Much to the dismay of Democrats, however a distinct possibility looms that the longtime-blue seat could turn red. A Siena Research Institute poll released on August 10 shows Democrat David Weprin ahead of his GOP [...]

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And, er ... hire a copy editor, too.

We haven’t given much coverage to the special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District thus far, which will pit Democrat Kate Marshall, the state treasurer, against Republican Mark Amodei, a former state senator (Tina profiled Amodei in May).  The seat became vacant when Governor Brian Sandoval appointed Dean Heller to finish John Ensign’s term in [...]

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Re-elect number: 36%.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats enjoy a substantial registration advantage over Republicans, going well into double digits.  For Democratic presidential contenders, this makes the Keystone State a must-win in a general election; there are few paths to the White House for a Democrat that don’t pass through Pennsylvania.  In 2010, Republicans took control of the state government [...]

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Tick tock.

They’re supposed to vote at 1 p.m., but according to Plouffe and another “Democrat familiar with the situation,” there’s still no bill. What’s the hold up? In all likelihood, they’re haggling over the “triggers” that’ll happen if the new Super Commission can’t agree on, or Congress won’t accept, new deficit reduction proposals later this year. [...]

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Ok, for the record, I’m not a fan of Rep. Alan Grayson but hey, we agree on everything he says in this video and I mean everything. Because I’m a Patriot and not a Democrat OR Republican, this video makes it my blog today.

Rep. Grayson is right on and I’m doing my part to help his video go viral in the  hopes that our Florida legislature, Supreme Court and the Florida judiciary actually has the spine to step up and bring the foreclosure fraud to a screeching halt in this state by instituting system-wide procedures and a cautious judiciary as a stop-gap to bring this problem under control. What has been happening in nearly every foreclosure case in Florida (and nationally for that matter) is criminal. Serious crimes are being committed and they need to be investigated properly and prosecuted with the full force of the law. Robo-signers, attorneys, paralegals, doc processing executives, bank executives and all of their ilk need to be named in federal and state indictments – and we should very well see  a few Florida judges thrown into that mix as well because from what I have seen and experienced, there are several of them complicit in the scheme to defraud homeowners and deny them of their basic rights to due process. At the very least, a number of the Florida judges should be brought up on ethics complaints and lose their seat as a judge because they have violated their oaths and have knowingly and willfuly denied due process to thousands upon thousands of Florida citizens.

And again, all of this is major reminder that WHO we vote for (including judges) really, really matters. I hope you are reminded of this come election day and that you conduct your own due diligence before you vote for anyone!

On Thursday afternoon, when Melissa Bean, a Democrat from Illinois, stood in the way of the Walt Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives just days before, frankly I was shocked.  I expected this sort of thing from any one of the Republicans, but from a Democrat? And a woman, no less?  Stunning, absolutely stunning.

Come to find out Friday afternoon that she and other “moderate democrats” (Read: “the banking lobby”) actually killed the proposed amendment that would have allowed judges to modify mortgages for homeowners in bankruptcy court.

In the end, 50 Democrats that voted for it the last time it passed the House, this time voted against it.  From start to finished in something like 72 hours.  And without a peep from homeowners in this country, of which more than 5 million have already lost homes to foreclosure, and with maybe 14 million coming in the next three years, according to Goldman Sachs’ forecasts.

But… I suppose it’s understandable… why would we possibly want judges to have a say?  After all, lately we’ve all learned how FABULOUSLY well the banks are doing at modifying loans this year under Obama’s HAMP CRAP.  Want the latest results from Treasury?  Well, you’re getting them whether you want them or not:

1. Remember SAXON Mortgage Services? You know, the servicer that finished in 1^st PLACE back in late July on those “Report Cards” that were going to shame these lying pieces of garbage into complying with the government contracts they signed?  That Saxon… THE ONE THAT WAS WAY AHEAD OF WELLS FARGO AND BANK OF AMERICA?

Well, as of DECEMBER 10^TH SAXON has issued 42 PERMANENT LOAN MODIFICATIONS out of 35,608 TRIAL MODS, FOR A WHOPPING .1%… THAT’S ONE TENTH OF ONE PERCENT.   Woofrigginghoo!

And you want to know the really funny part of that statistic… I don’t even believe that they’re telling the whole truth.  Would anyone like to bet against me saying that some of those 42 ended up with higher payments than before the modification, because if so… bring it.  I’ll even give you odds, how’s 10:1?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Come on, someone write in and put up a grand… I could use the extra Christmas cash.

Oh, and would you like to know how much money our government has offered the friendly folks over at SAXON in the way of INCENTIVE CASH for taking the trouble to modify a few mortgages they lied people into… $886,400,000.00.  Yeah, you read that right… $886.4 MILLION.  And I’m not going to say anything even remotely funny about that.

So, there’s our 1^st PLACE winner… ready for our next contestant?  Come on… this is fun, isn’t it?  How about good old IndyMac/One West Bank… that’s got to be worth a few grins and giggles… I don’t know about you, but I’m having a great frigging time doing this, aren’t you?

2.  IndyMac/One West Bank – Let’s see… Good old IndyMac has done 19,623 trial mods, but how many permanent mods?  I’m going to need a calculator here, hang on… carry the 7… times 3… minus 14… I’ve got it… ZERO PERCENT!  NONE.  NOT A GODDAMN ONE!  ZIPPO.  NIL.  SANS ANY.

Now, I bet you’re wondering how much incentive cash they’re in line for, aren’t you?  Just on the edge of your seat over there?  Well, I hope you’re sitting down, because the number is $814,240,000!  That’s $814.2 MILLION DOLLARS.  You do understand that’s just shy of a BILLION DOLLARS, right?

Would you like to know how much a BILLION really is?  Well, try this for an example:

1 million seconds is 12 days.

1 billion seconds… is 32 YEARS!

Or how about this one…

A stack of $1 million is about two feet high.

A stack of $1 billion… is three times higher than the Washington Monument!

In other words… a billion is a whole lot.  A whole frigging lot.

Yeah, why would we possibly need judges to help in this situation?  I certainly can’t think of a reason.  And you want to know something else… a lawyer asked me today why I do what I do.  I should have said… “Well shut the front door… I don’t know.  Just bored I guess.  I didn’t really want to see my daughter grow up, so I figured I’d write about something seven days a week, and since no one else was saying a damn word about this, I figured the competition level was perfect for a remedial writer like myself.”

Look, I’ve got to be brutally honest here.  I love having people read my articles and all, but not enough to be quiet about this.  What the hell are you people doing out there?  I’m thinking of going back to work and watching the country meltdown from a seat in the bleachers.  Maybe start writing about something else, because obviously I’m not accomplishing anything here.  Rents have dropped a lot in Hawaii, and I could do Hawaii full time.  I play a mean ukulele, not sure if I ever mentioned that?

Democrats killed it in the House… dead in three days.  The best chance to stabilize the U.S. housing market without costing taxpayers a dime.  A chance to stop the tragedy that is the foreclosure crisis, a tragedy that is going to do nothing but grow in size and scope for years to come… a tragedy that’s tearing people’s lives apart… and the banks said no, so it’s no.

And we’re all just hunky-dory with that?  I can’t believe it.  Oh wait… I forgot… you’re busy.  Not too busy to call and email me a couple of hundred times a week, I’ve noticed.  People, this is not funny in the least.

And before I go on, let me get one thing out of the way: Melissa “The Banker” Bean, an obvious bought-and-paid-for sycophant, should be tossed out of office directly onto her ample buttocks come the midterm election.  Period.  We’re still experiencing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression… a condition unquestionably caused by the unbridled greed and unchecked power of Wall Street’s bankers.  And she is clearly some banker’s betch, to use a word my 14 year old daughter and friends taught me.

Think I’m guessing about this?  Well, I’m not.  I looked up Ms. Bean… it was easy, like falling off a blog.  Melissa received at least $515,438 from banks and other financial institutions, including most notably JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.  That’s a half a million dollars plus from the people who don’t want anyone telling them what to do, or what they can’t do.

Of course, checking the Treasury report on servicer performance, I do see that Chase has done quite a bit better in the modification department than either Saxon or IndyMac.  Chase has permanently modified a whopping 3% of its trial modifications.  Of course, before you get too excited, Chase has only offered trial modifications to 32% of its eligible mortgages, so I guess we better say the jury’s still out.  I wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions and give them a pat on the back for that 3% prematurely.

Anyone feel like betting against some of those 3% ending up with higher payments than before the modification in Chase’s three percent pool of permanent mods?  Come on… you guys are not fun.  Okay, forget the 10:1… I’ll go 100:1 on Chase’s mods.  Step right up… No limits… I’m covering all takers.

Are you frigging kidding me?

Guys… look.  I don’t mean to beat up on you… I know how hard this whole thing is… believe me, I do.  But this is not the same country I grew up loving if all this sits just fine with everyone.  We can’t just sit around wondering who’s likely to win on American Idol, as we wait for the moving truck.  Because if we do, that truck is coming… sure as I’m writing this… it’s coming.

And what about all the lawyers I know are reading this?  You guys became lawyers for more than one reason, I’m sure.  Wasn’t any part of your motivation because you believed in the fairness that’s supposed to be inherent to our system of government… a “representative democracy”?  Could you really sit this one out?  Are you imagining that you’re immune from losing a house to foreclosure?  Because you’re not, you know.  No one is.

I’m 48 years old.  I’ve owned my own firm for better than twenty years now.  I’ve enjoyed a very successful career.  I’m fairly enterprising, and I’m wicked smart… and I could lose my house, so don’t kid yourself… you absolutely could lose yours too.

I’m learning a lot this year about politics in this country.  I’ve learned that we have more power than we think we do.

Did you see the latest news about Goldman Sachs and the $16.7 billion in bonuses they had been planning to give out this year?  Well, they’re still giving the bonuses, but not in cash… stock options instead.  Why do you suppose that is?  It’s because our representatives have been flooded with letters and calls all year long related to the egregious bonuses at Goldman, AIG and the numerous others.  And the political pressure in a midterm election is intense.  Congress doesn’t want to go home to campaign and find people standing around holding pitchforks and torches.

We can do the same thing for our cause, you know.  We really can.  My “A Hundred Thousand Homeowners” project is one such initiative, and there are others I’m working on, as well.

I’ve realized for some time that we live in a politically divided nation, but I was thinking that the divide was between Democrats and Republicans… the “left” and the “right”.  Apparently, I was wrong… today we’re actually divided between the Banker Party and the Common Sense Party…. Something like that anyway, it needs work.

Members of the Banker Party think banks are awesome in every way.  They never do anything the banks don’t like.  Members of the Common Sense Party understand that foreclosures must be stopped, and they think that causing the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression requires some level of new oversight to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen again five years from now.  And they’re willing to stand up and fight, before their country disappears before their own tearful eyes.

THIS ISN’T ABOUT RIGHT & LEFT.  IT’S ABOUT RIGHT & WRONG.

And in case you’re waiting for “it” to come back… “it’s” not coming back.  Or rather… it will be back, just like the technology IPO market will come back too.  But, it could easily be a decade before we see any sort of return to prosperity… and it could also be quite a bit longer than that.  Here’s one of the most telling statements I’ve seen in a while on this point.  It’s from the Congressional Oversight Panel’s December 2009 Report: “Taking Stock… What Has the TARP Achieved?”  They wrote:
“It is apparent that after 14 months, that significant underlying weaknesses in the financial system remains.”

We don’t have another 14 months to play around and let the banks destroy our way of life, which they most certainly will do.  Here’s another link to my favorite article on the topic.  It’s written by Simon Johnson, who in addition to have served as the Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund (“IMF”), is now a professor at MIT.  Here’s his article about what’s happened in this country, which was published in The Atlantic last May.

And here’s one from Rolling Stone from yesterday.  You should definitely read this one: President Obama’s Big Sell Out – Rolling Stone.

In Conclusion, don’t worry… I won’t quit if you won’t…

Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) wrote a very famous poem that, being Jewish, I’ve known since I was a little boy.  He wrote it in reference to the inactivity and apathy of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group after group.

Niemöller was an anti-Communist and as a result, supported Hitler’s rise to power in the beginning, but he soon after became the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to Hitler.  Hitler hated Niemöller and in 1937 had him arrested and sent to the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. His widely known and frequently quoted poem is a popular model for describing the dangers of political apathy.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;


Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;


Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;


Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak out—because I was a Protestant;

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Speaking out on subjects that matter.  That’s what Mandelman Matters is all about.  But click that last link and you find my T’was the Night Before Christmas – 2009, Political Year In Review.

I boil this all down to a couple things…

1. Not all democrats are bad, radical or hypocritical.
   
2. Most are though.
   
3. They have used “in your face” and despicable tactics as long as I can remember. CLICK HERE for an example of Leftist Tactics.
   
4. They are whiners when the same tactics are used on them. Reminds me of how terrorists react when do same.
5. They are hell bent on getting as much power.
6. They are blind to the destruction they inflict on our great country with that power.
7. The conservative base is finally awaking from their slumber.
8. The anger we feel is growing into rage.
   
9. We are not backing down any more.
10. We are dead serious about our constitutional rights – especially the 2nd amendment.
    
11. We will NOT be intimidated and backing down is NOT an option.
12. We will NOT allow our voices to be suppressed in any form or manner. This is NOT Cuba. This is NOT Venezuela. This is NOT North Korea and this is NOT Iran! Who does Tim Geithner think he is? Or Rahm Emanuel? These no-can-do nothing figureheads are servants of the people. They all are!
    
13. Get off of your power grab and serve the PEOPLE or the PEOPLE will send you packing JACK! That goes for everyone in the White House and Congress. I think they are seriously underestimating the rage that is growing and have forgotten that conservative policies are still the majority and backbone of this country. I don’t care if you’re a registered Democrat or Republican. When government starts taking over your jobs, your neighborhoods, starts taxing you after promising unequivocally they wouldn’t but instead come in start spending TRILLIONS when CUTTING SPENDING was the correct move… well, you do that (which they have) and they should expect a big kick in the ass out of office in a couple years.
14. Until then, we need to fight them tooth and nail so that they don’t get more of our freedoms and more of our money in the meantime. Bastards.

Excerpt below from MichelleMalkin.com

The activist Left can’t stand competition. Last week in Long Island, NY, opponents of the Democrats’ government health care takeover legislation outnumbered Obama supporters ten to one. The Tea Party activists toted American flags and signs that read “WE CAN’T AFFORD FREE HEALTH CARE” – prompting one foe to stalk into the peaceful crowd, gesticulate wildly, and shout unintelligible threats at the top of his lungs.

The same Democrat Masters of Astroturf who encouraged their followers to use “in your face” tactics during the campaign season now balk at vocal opposition from their fiscally conservative neighbors and co-workers. Obama’s architects of Kabuki town halls have packed public forums with partisan plants. Now, they accuse opponents gathering at impromptu rallies against the massive health care takeover legislation (which no one has read) of orchestrating “manufactured anger.”

Unaccustomed to pushback, the wealthy, astro-turfed ground troops for Obamacare – underwritten by unions, liberal philanthropists, the AARP, ACORN, and your tax dollars — have resorted to projection. As I’ve reported previously, the single-payer lobby boasts a $40 million budget and a stable of seasoned political operatives based at 1825 K Street in Washington, D.C. Now, that cabal is accusing the broad coalition of taxpayer activists, libertarians, independents, talk radio loyalists, bloggers, and first-time protesters against socialized medicine of being, yes, wealthy and astroturfed.

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