Carl von Sternberg left us today. He was a powerhouse of a man, a true American entrepreneur who built companies and created jobs.

The son of German farmers, he grew up on a hard-scrabble stoney farm in Pennsylvania, no stranger to tough physical labor. He was an expert at building stone walls, because of the need to clear the land. He earned his college degree from Yale by attending on a football scholarship.

Once I asked him how he learned what was needed to start a company, and he told me that he did it the first time in partnership with a mentor who knew the ropes. That person was Frank Manning of Alexandria, and the company was Essex Corporation, a human factors firm incorporated in the State of Virginia in 1969. Frank was president, Carl was secretary, and the initial capitalization of the company was based on issuing 1000 shares of common stock at $1.00 per share.

After Essex went public as an international corporation, Carl started another human factors company, and gave it his mother’s maiden name — Allen. Over a period of nine years, he built the company through the most diligent focus on the needs of government customers that I have ever seen in my fairly wide experience. Another of his noteworthy talents was the structuring of contracts that facilitated the movement of government contract money to Allen. The company had Indefinite Quantity Contracts (IQCs) and Basic Ordering Agreements (BOAs) for training at several large military bases. He also acquired Universal Consultants of Virginia Beach, which became a division of Allen. Instead of taking Allen public directly, Carl accomplished the same thing by selling it as a subsidiary to the Singer Company on October 15, 1986.

Carl started another human factors company in 1987, which he called Star Mountain — an English translation of his German last name. Many of his former employees left Allen and came to Star Mountain in order to continue to work for him. This company went public via a merger with Provant in 1998.

Under Singer, Allen had become little more than a legal corporate shell, and Carl was fond of the name. So after he sold Star Mountain, he repurchased Allen and built it up again. He told me that he had a different strategy this time. Since he was no longer a young man, he intended to build quickly through strategic acquisitions, and he did. Acquisitions included

• Hardware Solutions, Inc. (2001)
• Property Technologies, Ltd. (2001)
• Synoptic Systems Corporation (2002)
• WetStone Technologies (2007)

He leaves his mother’s namesake company a respected part of the business community, still sporting the same Capital Letter A logo that it had during its first incarnation.

Carl worked hard during the entire eighty-six years of his life, and for most of that time, he created jobs for scores to hundreds of others. He was an icon for the spirit of American enterprise.

Speculation based on misinformation characterizes what has become known as “the Kanjorski meme.” So here is a timeline of the events to set the record straight.

Last September, years of bad economic policy encouraged by Congress exacerbated by inept oversight caught up with the financial markets in the United States. Between the failure of Lehman Brothers on September 14 and the heavy institutional withdrawals from money market funds on September 18, a severe loss of liquidity occurred in the financial markets. To stem the tide of withdrawals from money market funds, the US Treasury Department announced a guarantee program for money market funds on September 19.

On September 21, the New York Post carried an alarming article based on word-of-mouth reports from unnamed sources:

ALMOST ARMAGEDDON
MARKETS WERE 500 TRADES FROM A MELTDOWN
September 21, 2008

The market was 500 trades away from Armageddon on Thursday, traders inside two large custodial banks tell The Post….

According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening. The total money-market capitalization was roughly $4 trillion that morning.

Felix Salmon of Portfolio.com has recently observed that these were mostly institutional investors that were selling. It should also be noted that this wasn’t a pure loss. It was selling, which implies that at some attractive lower price, there would be buyers. That’s the way the market works. Also, the only documented source for the figure of $500 billion, or 12% of the money markets, is a newspaper article that doesn’t name attribution.

The current kerfuffle began on January 27, 2009 when Democratic U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski (PA-11) appeared on the morning television show Washington Journal on C-SPAN. The video and transcript are included in our earlier post here. On television, Kanjorski asserted that the US had faced the loss of $550 billion in two hours, with the implication that this numerical information came from then Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke.

The next day a video clip of the interview was posted on YouTube, where it sat for ten days. The blog Zero Hedge examined the story on February 8:

How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18

….Democratic Representative Kanjorski explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.” According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occurred over the period of an hour or two. And it gets worse. Kanjorski paraphrases the … disclosure by Bernanke and Paulson….

Some other blogs picked up the story from Zero Hedge. But it went mostly unnoticed until Rush Limbaugh played the video clip on his radio show on February 10th, and the Kanjorski meme went viral. Also on Tuesday, February 10, the MSNBC show Countdown with Keith Olbermann discussed Kanjorski’s televised interview. The Shamokin, PA News Item discussed Kanjorski’s rising notoriety:

Kanjorski hits the spotlight

For the last 24 years, Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski has toiled in Washington, D.C. in relative obscurity, known best to his constituents who have elected him their representative 13 times….

Jan. 27: Kanjorski spends half an hour on “Washington Journal,” the morning television program of C-SPAN, the cable network whose main mission is airing the official proceedings of the House and Senate.

The C-SPAN appearance gained Kanjorski spinoff air time. His statement that the national and world financial markets came close to a major meltdown in September was picked up Tuesday by the MSNBC program, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.”….

Kanjorski said all the attention is partly a benefit of his seniority.

“I’ve been preparing 24 years … that if the problem ever did occur, I’d be able to be a major participant in it,” he said. “And it so happened that it did occur in September and I became very active in it. Now that role has just continued to grow.”

He’s also looking, he said, to be more of a crusader….

After that “talk show Tuesday,” the blogs were abuzz with the subject, but by then there was enough misinformation extant to cause problems. Then Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke actually visited Capitol Hill on September 23 and September 24, but in his C-SPAN interview, Kanjorski recalled the date incorrectly as September 15. So when he said that the crisis occurred the previous Thursday, bloggers who didn’t do due diligence pegged the crisis on September 11, which gave rise to a whole plethora of Islamic jihad theories.

Here’s one example of how the meme started from the popular Mudville Gazette, which supplies the incorrect conclusion about the date as parenthetical information:

9/11/2008 CATASTROPHIC FINANCIAL TERRORIST ATTACK CAUSED ECONOMIC MELTDOWN?

Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains what former Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke told congress in a closed door session in September 2008 .

“On Thursday [Thursday was September 11th] at about 11 o clock in the morning The Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two. Money was being removed electronically.” says Kanjorski.

Whooah! Why are we just now hearing about this? Where’s the media? Why wasn’t there an official statement?

The widely read blog Atlas Shrugs also propagated the incorrect date:

9/11/2008 CATASTROPHIC FINANCIAL TERRORIST ATTACK CAUSED ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

THURSDAY was …….SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

This was a Financial Terrorist Attack on the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Aren’t the American people entitled to know who was behind the run on the banks?

Why was this kept from the American people before the most important election in US history?…

Once those two much-visited blogs used the incorrect date, the problem multiplied as other bloggers wrote derivative posts. Sixteen days after the actual C-SPAN interview, the Scranton, PA Times-Tribune discussed the rising furor in the Blogosphere:

Kanjorski: Economy teetered near collapse
Thursday, February 12, 2009

U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski is telling anyone who will listen lately the nation and world came within hours of economic collapse in September.

….Mr. Kanjorski’s Jan. 27 appearance on C-SPAN’s morning Washington Journal program is now rocking the blogosphere….

In essence, Mr. Kanjorski said there was an “electronic bank run.” ….

What actually happened? Transcripts of testimony before congressional committees and subcommittees are a matter of public record.

The US Department of the Treasury maintains a list of all the official appearances by Treasury Department spokespersons on its “Press Room” website. Then secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. made only two appearances on Capitol Hill in September 2008, a 9/23 visit to the Senate Banking Committee and a 9/24 visit to the House Financial Services Committee. The only statements from those transcripts relevant to the Kanjorski allegations are given below. The testimony before both houses of congress is almost identical. In the second transcript, I have italicized the two words that are different.

---

September 23, 2008
HP-1153

Testimony by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. before the Senate Banking Committee on Turmoil in US Credit Markets

….last week our credit markets froze — even some Main Street non-financial companies had trouble financing their normal business operations. If that situation were to persist, it would threaten all parts of our economy….

We have … taken a number of powerful tactical steps to increase confidence in the system, including a temporary guaranty program for the U.S. money market mutual fund industry….

….We saw market turmoil reach a new level last week, and spill over into the rest of the economy.

---

September 24, 2008
HP-1154

Testimony by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. before the House Committee on Financial Services Hearing on Turmoil in U.S. Credit Markets

….last week our credit markets froze up — even some Main Street non-financial companies had trouble financing their normal business operations. If that situation were to persist, it would threaten all parts of our economy….

We have … taken a number of powerful tactical steps to increase confidence in the system, including a temporary guaranty program for the U.S. money market mutual fund industry…. We saw financial market turmoil reach a new level last week, and spill over into the rest of the economy.

---

Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, also visited Capitol Hill on the exact same two days as Paulson. His first visit, on September 23, was also before the Senate Banking Committee. His second visit, on September 24, was to a joint committee from both houses. This is the only testimony during that timeframe that could be characterized as remarks to both senators and representatives.

---

September 23, 2008

Statement of Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate

….While perhaps manageable in itself, Lehman’s default was combined with the unexpectedly rapid collapse of AIG, which together contributed to the development last week of extraordinarily turbulent conditions in global financial markets. These conditions caused equity prices to fall sharply, the cost of short-term credit–where available–to spike upward, and liquidity to dry up in many markets. Losses at a large money market mutual fund sparked extensive withdrawals from a number of such funds….

Despite the efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and other agencies, global financial markets remain under extraordinary stress. Action by the Congress is urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and for our economy….

---

September 24, 2008

Statement of Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System before the Joint Economic Committee, United States Congress

While perhaps manageable in itself, Lehman’s default was combined with the unexpectedly rapid collapse of AIG, which together contributed to the development last week of extraordinarily turbulent conditions in global financial markets. These conditions caused equity prices to fall sharply, the cost of short-term credit–where available–to spike upward, and liquidity to dry up in many markets. Losses at a large money market mutual fund sparked extensive withdrawals from a number of such funds….

Despite the efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and other agencies, global financial markets remain under extraordinary stress. Action by the Congress is urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and for our economy….

---

There is no question that last September was a turbulent period for the financial markets. But it was a result of years of bad legislation by Congress and failure of our regulatory institutions to do their jobs. It was also a result of a pervasive American culture of living beyond our means. The excesses simply caught up with us. We do not need Islamic jihad to do us in, when we are so profligate and careless ourselves.

Our economy provides the means for all of us to have the necessities of a good and decent life — wholesome food, warm and comfortable clothing, safe and adequate housing. But when we stretch beyond our income to acquire large cracker box McMansions, drive gas guzzling sport utility vehicles, and constantly try to outspend and impress our peers, we get into trouble. We are simply experiencing a very severe correction that is a logical result of our rampant materialism.

Other reports:

Testimony Concerning Turmoil in U.S. Credit Markets by Chairman Christopher Cox, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate — September 23, 2008

---

UPDATE (Thursday, February 19): The Zero Hedge post cited in the above article includes an update referencing a video that purports to substantiate Kanjorski’s claims.

Update – for all who claim that Kanjorski is yapping with a few screws loose upstairs, take a look at this clip…. This is archived footage from the September 24 House Financial Services hearing at which both Paulson and Bernanke are present. Kanjorski asks Paulson this very question, and states to Paulson, that the information came originally from him. Now, Kanjorski may be anything but not senile as he is merely repeating facts that Paulson tells him. And Paulson does not refute the facts.

The assertion is basically that Kanjorski wouldn’t have said the information came from Paulson in the subcommittee hearing if it were not true, and that it must be true because Paulson did not contradict Kanjorski. But that is, in fact, no proof of anything. I didn’t bother to mention this in the original article, because I didn’t think anyone would be illogical enough to buy into it, but apparently some people have. So I add the following….

I was well aware of this update to the Zero Hedge post when I wrote the original post. So I checked it out thoroughly before I published.

Note the technique that Kanjorski used. Kanjorski made the $550 billion assertion, and told Paulson that the information came from him (Paulson). But there is no record of Paulson actually saying that. The way Congress works, while Kanjorski had the floor, Paulson could not interrupt and correct him. All are bound by strict “rules of order.” So the comment “Paulson does not refute the facts” has no evidentiary value relevant to the credibility of Kanjorski’s assertion.

When Paulson finally got a chance to speak, he wisely didn’t waste time going back to that. He used every second of his speaking time to advance his own purpose. He didn’t need to correct Kanjorski for the people who count, because there is an accurate record of what was said — the Congressional Record — which is published and available to the public.

Nor would it have been prudent for Paulson to correct Kanjorski. Paulson is a reasonably class act academic, while Kanjorski is a grandstanding politician. No percentage for Paulson in getting into a dogfight with him. The educated Paulson, although more highly qualified professionally than Kanjorski, a political hack from a coal-mining district, is a political appointee who will be replaced. Kanjorski is rather securely elected from a congressional district somewhat gerrymandered to include the heavy Democratic population centers along PA Route 11 and Interstate 80, among them Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.

If a newspaper repeated Kanjorski’s intentional or unintentional mistake as fact, they could get sued. So they would either check the Congressional Record, or if lazy, just leave the subject alone or repeat the remarks in quotes by Kanjorski (which is what they did). Therefore Paulson did not have to worry about this misinformation propagating as legitimate news. Unfortunately, most blogs are a lot sloppier, and so less credible.

When you want to find out what really happened, you can go through the Congressional Record for the day of the session. Go to this page to select the year that contains the day you want to study — Congressional Record Index

From there you can go to a specific year by selecting “Browse the Congressional Record by Day of Session” and inputting a year. For the present discussion, that’s 2008, and the index for 2008 is here — Congressional Record: Browse 2008-2009

Scroll down to September 23 and 24 for 2008 and you will find that there are 30 records of testimony for those two days. To be sure of your ground, it is necessary to scan all of them. If Paulson quoted the $550 billion figure, it would be in there somewhere.

Now this is difficult and tedious to do, because the PDF is lousy to work with. But I went through them, isolated the relevant testimony, and included links to it for all four complete testimonies in my article. I scrupulously reproduced the wording that had a bearing on the subject, and documented my work all round with hyperlinks.

I had already used Zero Hedge as an example of a blog that propagated the story based on Kanjorski’s TV interview without vetting it. I didn’t bother to dispute their update material at the end of the post because I didn’t want to excoriate them any more than necessary and because it didn’t further the point of my original article.

…it’s an Islamic thing. The Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other Muslim groups dispatch their victims by roughly carving through the human neck with a hand-held knife, a process that takes a few minutes. The brain retains sufficient oxygen to live for about thirteen seconds after the head is severed — victims can still communicate their awareness by blinking their eyelids.

Execution by beheading was practiced historically in western Europe, but there it was done with the guillotine, a sharp heavy blade that dropped straight down and swiftly severed the neck. In short, European beheading was a form of execution, while Islamic beheading is savage butchery.

The practice also occurs in South America, where this form of intimidation is now rampant among the drug cartels. It is a little swifter there, being done with a razor-sharp machete. For some years now, it has also been going on in the United States, where law enforcement and the media have conspired to hide it from the public view.

No longer. A prominent Buffalo, New York businessman beheaded his wife last Thursday, as an alternative to allowing her to divorce him. What makes this story especially notable is the nature of his business. Muzzammil Hassan, the murderous husband, is the founder and CEO of Bridges Television, a network founded for the purpose of dispelling violent stereotypes of Muslims!

Orchard Park businessman charged in beheading of wife

Friends expressed shock on Friday that the founder of a Muslim TV channel — which he launched in order to counter violent images of Muslims — has been arrested in his wife’s brutal slaying.

Detectives have charged Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder after his wife was found beheaded Thursday at the offices of the cable channel, Bridges TV, in the Village of Orchard Park.

The victim was identified as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37….

Aasiya Hassan had filed for divorce and obtained an order of protection on Feb. 6, barring her husband from their home in Orchard Park, police said.

“There had been problems before — there had been prior incidents of physical abuse,” said Corey Hogan, whose law firm, Hogan Willig, represented Aasiya Hassan in the divorce proceeding.

Hogan said discussions were being held about continuing arrangements for the couple’s two children, ages 4 and 6, and two older children, ages 17 and 18, from Muzzammil Hassan’s previous marriage….

The English-language broadcast had the endorsement of prominent American Muslims, including boxing great Muhammad Ali. News and other programs developed by the station were distributed via satellite to cable networks around the country….

Moderate American Muslims are not the only ones who were taken in by the charming and literate Hassan. Our own ADMC western New York reporter knew him and wrote a glowing column about his television venture.

The answer to prejudice and discrimination which can lead to distrust and even hatred is to become familiar with backgrounds and customs. We should take people as they are, without accepting the burden of ignorance in perception.

One such way to become familiar with these customs and attitudes is through a local TV program appropriately called Bridges TV that has its studio in Orchard Park. It is run by a person from Pakistan who wants the American public to know the truth about those who come from the Middle East and South Asia….

Bridges TV is offered on Adelphia Cable as a premium channel, but because of its important messages, should be offered as an educational program and part of the basic package. Since there is a great need to provide information about the customs and cultures of this fast growing segment of our population, it should be offered as a public service. Interested people should contact Adelphia Cable and insist that this program be made available to all subscribers without the extra charge.

To understand what this young mother endured during the last moments of her life, you can view the video below. First seven men are introduced who are about to be decapitated by the Taliban. Then the video shows each killing, performed with a hand-held knife. The video is gruesome, so don’t watch if you are faint of heart.

After you have seen just what is involved, consider the fact that this same cultural expression took place in a pricey upperclass suburb south of Buffalo, a quaint village with authentic colonial houses and a Quaker meeting house still in use that is an icon for American tradition. In fact, it is the village where this writer graduated from high school.

I only wish that this video could be shown to the Hassan jury when the time for his trial comes. His cultural traditions are no excuse, and should not be allowed to mitigate his punishment. He chose to come and live in our country, and should be judged by American standards.

The Obama administration has moved forward with lighting speed to impose its agenda upon us before anyone can mount an effective opposition. This has obviously been planned for a long time. That we have been so poorly served by our duly elected politicians, especially three Senate Republicans and virtually the entire Democrat Party, is discouraging beyond words.

Unless some of these people get a serious dose of moral integrity overnight, Obama’s massive spending bill will become law, and the beginning of the end of our great nation will hove into sight.

It is now becoming apparent that a large proportion of the bill is nothing more than a massive collection of earmarks (although I told you that would happen a few weeks ago.) But it is different in that the lengths they have gone to hide the authorship of those earmarks are unprecedented.

Usually earmarks have the lawmaker’s name attached to them, but not in this bill. You have to really search to find the person behind it. But that person is there, when you look hard enough.

There is the pathetic case of the $300 million “golfcart” earmark, only they call them “neighborhood electric vehicles.” Is this the beginning of mandated green cars like the Pelosi GTxi?

Since these carts are produced in North Dakota and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, it seems obvious that he would be the source of this particular “stimulus.” Or maybe he just happens to be from North Dakota?

Then there is the case of the $2 billion for a “near-zero emmissions power plant.” The only place one of these was ever considered was, you guessed it, Illinois. But the project was abandoned due to the evolution of newer technologies.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich then tried to restart the project with a half-million dollar lobbying effort paid for by Illinois taxpayers. He’s gone now, of course… But the entire Illinois delegation has apparently been trying to get this back on the burner too, so presto chango! There it is. An earmarked $2 billion waste of taxpayer dollars brought to you by No-Earmarks-Obama and the most ethical administration in history.

Where have we heard that before? Oh yes, Nancy Pelosi, who promised, upon ascending to the Speakership that her’s would be “the most ethical Congress in history.” She’s trying to “save the planet” after all.

And before that? Oh yes, when Bill Clinton took office didn’t he promise that his would be “the most ethical administration in history?”

Can’t these guys come up with any new material? I would laugh if I didn’t want to cry so much. But the thing is, they’re not comedians. It is as if an enemy of the United States scoured the land for the most inept, arrogant, dishonest, self-serving, piggish scum they could find and then put them up for office because they knew these people would be like one-man wrecking crews.

Our enemies couldn’t have done a better job if they had picked them themselves. Hmmm… Maybe they did.

But just when you thought the scum couldn’t get much slimier, along comes Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) with the most contemptible bit of hubris in a week that has been overflowing with it. Back in the 1980s, Patrick Leahy had to resign from the Intelligence Committee after a series of classified leaks, one of which may have caused an undercover agent’s death. As Discover The Networks relates:

During the mid-1980s, the heart of the Reagan administration, Leahy served as vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was while in this position of power that he earned the nickname “Leahy the Leaker.” According to a 1987 San Diego Union-Tribune report, in a 1985 television appearance Leahy disclosed classified information that one of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s telephone conversations had been intercepted. The information that Leahy revealed had been used in the operation to capture the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and killed American citizens, and the Union-Tribune claimed that Leahy’s indiscretion may have cost the life of at least one of the Egyptian operatives involved in that operation.

There were other similar indescretions until he was finally forced off the committee.

The man should have been shot for treason. But instead we have him proposing a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” like South Africa had. That he of all people would suggest such a thing is a moral outrage.

Now, for anyone to implicitly compare the Bush administration to the Apartheid South African government is beyond belief, but to even think that every controversial issue was not exhaustively investigated during Bush’s tenure is to simply be astonishingly forgetful or unconscionably ignorant of facts. But I don’t think Leahy is ignorant of anything. The man knows exactly what he is doing.

Patrick Leahy and the entire Democrat Party need to take a deep breath. They have committed countless crimes over the past thirty years with almost complete impunity because of the help they get from the media, who either suppress the story, discredit it, or attack the storyteller. They have been further aided and abetted by a hapless Republican Party and a law enforcement establishment that is too timid or corrupt to go after these people.

The current administration likely got where it is through an extensive network of corrupt organizations and activities, and much of the crisis we face today was indeed manufactured by the Left.

However, I have resisted believing that the timing of the financial crisis – coming as it did almost immediately following the stunningly successful Republican Convention when John McCain secured a sizeable lead in the polls – was anything more than dumb luck for Obama.

A recent revelation in a C-SPAN interview, however, raises some interesting questions. Democratic Representative Paul Kanjorski (PA-11), Capital Market Subcommittee Chair in the US House of Representatives, recently revealed the following:

Here’s the facts, and we don’t even talk about these things. On Thursday [September 18] at about eleven o’clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 800 points between September 15 and 17. Most of that was attributed to the failure of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch’s emergency buyout, and a host of other bad financial news.

I have learned from an insider in the financial business that on September 18th, most of the money was pulled by institutional investors, pension funds and the like, in response to the mounting bad news. So it remains likely that the financial system’s problems had just reached critical mass.

Still Lehman Brother’s strong preference for the Democrat Party leaves one wondering. Could they have held off another month? Another three months? Did a Democrat Treasury Secretary take it upon himself to whisper in the ear of his friends at Lehman Brothers that “now is the time?”

During the election Real Clear Politics kept an interactive timeline in graphic form showing the ups and downs of the presidential candidates’ poll numbers. Go to the RCP website here and scroll down the page to the graph. McCain enjoyed one of his few leads in the polls immediately following the Republican convention. But that lead began plummeting on the 15th. Obama jumped ahead 1.9 points on September 19th, the day after the run on the bank and his lead only increased after that.

These may be coincidences, but there is no doubt that the bad economic news was a great boon to Obama’s candidacy. One thing is for certain. The Democrats were able to exploit this situation quickly, accusing Republicans of causing the crisis with their “free market, anti-regulatory policies.”

Nothing could be further from the truth of course. Thirty years of Democrat efforts to turn banks into welfare housing financiers indisputably created this financial crisis, despite Republican attempts to rein them in. But as usual, Republicans were inexplicably inept in seizing upon this fact to put the blame where it has always belonged: with Democrats.

In any case, we have faced one outrage after another since Obama took office. One bait and switch after another. One lie camouflaged by a smile after another. One broken promise after another.

The economic “stimulus” plan is a vast earmark bill that will stimulate tons of political capital for all those Democrat legislators too gutless to put their names to it. And yes, it will even bring some jobs to those neighborhoods (while the rest of us flounder.) You will be certain to hear about all the prosperity and happy Kulaks, but about the downside, our loyal media will be deafeningly silent.

We have endeavored to expose some of the other horrible things in this monstrosity, like seniors being cut out of “age related” medical procedures, or $4.2 billion going to ACORN. We will doubtless discover others to our horror after the bill becomes law.

So we have about had it.

If the Left wants to keep attacking on issues they know to be utterly without merit, they must know they are pushing this country towards civil war. I think they have actually been spoiling for it. I think it is part and parcel of their crisis strategy. Either we completely capitulate to their overtly fraudulent accusations, to their wholesale theft of our economy, to their relentless character assassinations, to their criminalizing of policy differences, to their treasonous activities, to their shameless power grabs, or we fight.

Are they going to come to their senses, ever? Or will they carry this country to anarchy? For that’s where we are headed if this stuff doesn’t stop.

Obama announced today that Caterpillar’s CEO told him they would rehire some of the 22,000 workers they recently laid off if the “stimulus” bill passes.

What exhilarating news! Fantastic!

But wait.

We pass the “stimulus,” in return for which we get some of those folks back to work? Oh heck, let’s be generous and hire ‘em all back.

Let me see… Stimulus = $838 billion, that’s $838,000,000,000 (the current Senate version anyway. No doubt it will be bigger) divided by 22,000? That comes to $38 million ($38,090,909.09 to be exact) per employee.

I’m applying for a job right now!

No! I know! Just kidding.

Obama is going to “save or create” 4 million jobs with this “stimulus.” How does he know which?

I feel so much better. That comes to a mereonly $209 thousand per job.

The pay is so good! Why don’t we all go to work for Obama?

Oh that’s right, we’re going to.

Suckers.

I have suspected for a long time and I openly told people in the fall of 2008 that certain entities were trying to harm the economy in order to ensure that Obama would get elected in the November elections. If you watched the stock markets in the months before the election of 2008, you saw these massive declines at the end of the day almost every day. These declines were by entities selling massive amounts of stock in what clearly looked like an attempt to sink the stock markets each day in time for the prime time news each night.

Now we have confirmation that there was a massive “run on the banks” by some unknown entity on September 18, 2008 in an effort to affect the election. Democratic Representative Paul Kanjorski (PA-11), Capital Market Subcommittee Chair in the US House of Representatives, describes this stealth bank panic in the video below (transcript follows).

I suspect there was an economic coup d’état in September of 2008 by extremely wealthy Liberals and Democrats and we simply were not smart enough to see it happen right in front of us. I also suspect that the plan succeeded in getting Obama elected but is now completely out of control.

Transcript

It’s because of the misconceptions out there that things were done that are misunderstood. We did not give the $700 billion dollars for the purpose of lending money. That was never in the program. It was misconstrued initially and put together with the suggestion by the Secretary of the Treasury that we would be buying what we called “dirty assets” — defective mortgages and securities that were held in these banks — that the government would find a way to create a market, buy them in, take them off the balance sheets of the banks so that the banks could continue to function normally…. I supported that, but also part of the bill, we gave the jurisdiction and authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to make investments in banks. He had very wide authority because quite frankly, we’re not the experts on the Hill as to how to solve this problem. And the problem is a multi-faceted problem, so we gave great flexibility to the Secretary of the Treasury to act….

I was there when the Secretary and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked with members of Congress about what was going on…. Here’s the facts, and we don’t even talk about these things. On Thursday [September 18] at about eleven o’clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic out there, and that’s what actually happened.

If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2 o’clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. Now we talked at that time about what would happen if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.

And that’s why, when they made the point we’ve got to act and do things quickly we did. Now Secretary Paulson said, “Let’s buy out these sub-prime mortgages.” That’s when he came to Congress. But he said, “Give us latitude and large authority to do many things as we decide necessary. And give us seven hundred billion dollars to do that.”

Shortly after we enacted our bill with those very broad powers. The U.K. came out and said, “No, we don’t have enough money to buy toxic assets. Instead, we’re going to put our money into banks so that their equity grows and they’re not bankrupt.” And so the U.K. started that process and that’s true. It was much cheaper to put more money in banks as equity investment than to start buying their bad assets, because it became early determined that we’d probably have to spend three or four trillion dollars of taxpayer’s money to buy these bad assets. And we didn’t have… we only had seven hundred billion dollars. So Paulson made a complete switch, went in and started putting money in buying securities and reinvesting in the banks of the United States. Why? Because if you don’t have a banking system you don’t have an economy. And although we did that, it wasn’t enough money, and as fast as we did that, the economy has been falling, and the reason last week… We’re really no better off today than we were three months ago because we’v had a decrease in the equity positions of banks because other assets are going sour by the moment….

Related:

The New York Post — ALMOST ARMAGEDDON

By MICHAEL GRAY
September 21, 2008

The market was 500 trades away from Armageddon on Thursday, traders inside two large custodial banks tell The Post.

Had the Treasury and Fed not quickly stepped into the fray that morning with a quick $105 billion injection of liquidity, the Dow could have collapsed to the 8,300-level – a 22 percent decline! – while the clang of the opening bell was still echoing around the cavernous exchange floor.

According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening. The total money-market capitalization was roughly $4 trillion that morning.

The panicked selling was directly linked to the seizing up of the credit markets – including a $52 billion constriction in commercial paper – and the rumors of additional money market funds “breaking the buck,” or dropping below $1 net asset value.

The Fed’s dramatic $105 billion liquidity injection on Thursday (pre-market) was just enough to keep key institutional accounts from following through on the sell orders and starting a stampede of cash that could have brought large tracts of the US economy to a halt….

Forest fire jihad… Few in the mainstream media have mentioned the possibility. And even if it turns out to be true that Islamic Jihadists set the deadly fires in Australia, when and if they are identified, the authorities will no doubt refer to them simply as arsonists. The imperative to avoid frightening the public or to be politically correct has lethal consequences. Draw your own conclusions from these two news items:

1.  From The Age (AU) — Islam group urges forest fire jihad

September 7, 2008

AUSTRALIA has been singled out as a target for “forest jihad” by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror.

US intelligence channels earlier this year identified a website calling on Muslims … to “start forest fires”, claiming “scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels’ forests when they do the same to our lands”.

The website, posted by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network, argues in Arabic that lighting fires is an effective form of terrorism justified in Islamic law under the “eye for an eye” doctrine.

The posting – which instructs jihadis to remember “forest jihad” … says fires cause economic damage and pollution, tie up security agencies and can take months to extinguish so that “this terror will haunt them for an extended period of time”.

2.  BBC News (UK) — Australia police target arsonists:

February 10, 2009

Police in Australia’s wildfire-ravaged state of Victoria say they are confident of catching arsonists they suspect are behind some of the fires.

A 100-strong police investigation squad has been set up, and some scorched towns declared crime scenes.

Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described the possibility of arson as “murder on a grand scale”.

The official death toll stands at 181, but is expected to rise steeply as the operation to recover bodies continues.

About 500 people have been injured and nearly 1,000 homes destroyed across 365,000 hectares (902,000 acres) of torched land, said Mr Rudd….

Related:

Jihad Watch — Forest fire jihad in Australia?

The Amboy Times — Australia targeted for ‘Forest Fire’ jihad?

The reason is simple; Assault Weapons do not exist in the general population.

Since the Federal Firearms act of 1934, fully automatic firearms (Assault Weapons) cannot be purchased unless the buyer files a request to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) and pays a relatively high annual transfer tax. These are few and far between. The proliferation of such firearms is further limited by the market place. One of the most well known Sub Machine guns is the Thompson, made famous in the 1930s gangster era. Today, the price for a decent Thompson will start at $35,000.

Recall my earlier article which addresses the tactics used by antis to deprive people of their rights. To reiterate; demonize, demogogue, distort and diminish.

A first step is to use emotion to create confusion in the mind of the non-shooting public. It was exactly for this purpose that Josh Sugarmann, currently of the Violence Policy Center (VPC), recommended use of the term “Assault Weapon” back in 1988. The intent was to convince the non-shooting public that machine guns were commonly used in street crime. Then by showing a picture of one thing and describing it as another, they could demonize an entire class of firearms. They distort by calling these the criminals’ weapon of choice and demogogue by calling for action “to stop the blood that is flowing in the streets.” The news media adds distortions of their own by showing videos of machine guns when reporting on semi-automatic firearms. A few years ago, CNN had to retract and apologize for a news story that demonstrated a machine gun describing it as a commonly available “Assault Weapon.” More recently, Senator Carl Levin (D) of Michigan railed against readily available weapons that can fire 600 rounds per minute. I challenge him to produce that firearm.

The ban that expired in 2004 did not prohibit the manufacture of any firearms. However, it did prohibit or limit certain attachments such as a bayonet lug, flash supressor, collapsable stock or protruding pistol grip. None of these features provide a criminal with any substantive advantage. Not clear how many drive-by bayonetings were prevented.

While the Brady Campaign rolls out distorted statistics to claim the ban was effective in reducing crime, a complementary anti gun organization, the Violence Policy Center, said “you can’t argue with a straight face that the ban has been effective.” One of the claims from these groups states that one in five police officers slain in the line of duty between 1998 and 2001 was killed with an Assault Weapon. However, FBI statistics show that in most of the crimes in question, so called “Assault Weapons” were not involved. What FBI reports do show is that so called “assault weapons” are used in only approximately 1.6% of crime. The FBI further reports that violent crime and murder declined 38% and 42% respectively between 1991 and 2006 with continuing declines in 2007. During this same period firearms ownership increased by some 75 million of which some one third were semiautomatics. Clearly, the assertion that guns cause crime is nonsense. In addition, studies by the National Academy of Sciences, Center for Disease Control, the US COngress and others acknowledge that a correlation between any gun law and a reduction in crime cannot be made.

What they are trying to do is establish the precedent for banning a class of firearms under the guise of reasonableness and crime control. Ban a firearm because of how it looks, not because of how it functions. Just ban a firearm or class of firearms.

Semiautomatic firearms are used for the same reasons as any other. Namely hunting, competitive shooting, self defense, informal shooting and collecting. Semi automatics differ only in appearance, not in functionality. A ban is ineffective because it cannot be directed toward an instrument that does not exist. The conundrum is that the antis have created a myth and are frustrated because they cannot accurately or correctly define the real life object no one should be allowed to possess.

Regardless, any law directed to an object is destined to failure because an object does not act on its own. Such laws affect only the law abiding and there are no law abiding criminals. The issue not being addressed is criminal behavior.

Assault is a behavior, not an object.

Just watch in disbelief as Harry Reid tries to convince the interviewer that paying the United States income tax is voluntary! This video was posted last August, but merits a fresh look in light of the massive porkulus bill that Harry Reid is ramming down our throats today.

This is a short clip taken from a much longer video titled The Proper Function of Government. It is from a series of interviews by Jan Helfeld called The Bottom Line Interviews. Helfeld uses the Socratic technique of interviewing to expose contradictions in politicians’ thinking.

The pork-loving Senate is nothing if not devious and sneaky. The “neighborhood electric vehicles” in the stimulus package are GOLF CARTS. From NewsMax we read:

The U.S. Senate’s stimulus package includes $300 million for environmentally friendly modes of transportation, including “neighborhood electric vehicles” — which are, in fact, golf carts.

The 778-page Senate bill includes this allocation: “For capital expenditures and necessary expenses of acquiring motor vehicles with higher fuel economy, including: hybrid vehicles; neighborhood electric vehicles; electric vehicles; and commercially-available, plug-in hybrid vehicles, $300,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2011.”

Wonder if I qualify — I could use one of those neighborhood electric vehicles around here.

This little gem was discovered by Amanda Carpenter at Townhall:

The Democrats thought they could fool you by renaming the money earmarked for golf carts in the stimulus bill as paying for “neighborhood electric vehicles” and “low speed motor vehicles.”….

It’s right on page 96 of the massive 778-page bill….

Michelle Malkin takes note in a long list of earmarks:

The golf cart stimulus

…Who’s behind this? The “neighborhood electric vehicles” — souped-up golf carts — that would benefit most are manufactured in North Dakota.

Porkulus: It’s what’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the Senate floor.

Go here to read it and weep for your children’s mortgaged future.