Okay people, get a grip. According to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum, "At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9 percent of the total work force or 11,385,000 people, were unemployed." What's our unemployment rate right now? It's 6.1 percent. Yeah, big difference, right? But you wouldn't know it to read CNN which offers up a load of excrement today in the form of a panic-causing story about people during the Great Depression eating squirrel and having to "catch" their meals. Well, I'd like to clue you in on a couple of things: #1- I know some of the folks who work over at CNN.com and they're very young. I, on the other hand, was born in my parents' 40s and my mom and dad were born in 1924. At the height of the Great Depression, my parents were 9 years old--and my parents (god rest my Dad's soul) wouldn't know how to comment on a blog, they wouldn't even know what a blog was. So, I would suggest to the Honeycomb Hideout Team over at CNN that they check the ages of the people with whom they talk or chat or blog and do the math and see if in FACT that person could actually have parents who were alive during the Great Depression. #2--Hell, there are people in the south who still eat squirrel and they LOVE it. My dad ate it right up until the year he died, 2003. So, while I find the idea repulsive, I keep in mind two things: The folks at CNN very seldom fact check when they pop off with their dire predictions. And, the folks at CNN are fearmongerers of the worst sort. Their ratings rely on panic, as they have shown over and over again. Don't forget that it was the Persian Gulf War and its scud missile threat that actually made CNN a going concern. They know which side their bread is buttered on...or do they? Has it occurred to the ninnies over there that maybe, just maybe, they're also scaring off advertisers with this garbage? May they reap what they sow, and may the rest of us have the good sense not to buy it. (Full article and comments)

The National Review, which CNN now considers “influential”—now that it’s knocking McCain—has published an editorial that critiques McCain's plan as “creating a level of moral hazard that is unacceptable.” As if Fannie and Freddie's takeover by the government on Sept. 7 hadn't already essentially done this. When the government got Fannie and Freddie, it picked up those bad mortages. This is absolutely hilarious. It’s like watching the local whorehouse (CNN) decorate for Christmas (use conservative sources, for a change)  because whatever Christian values might dictate about prostitution (CNN's biased reporting), it’s a time when men get drunk and generous (when the right wing peanut gallery can be of use to CNN in trashing McCain).

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Obama supporters must have cringed painfully last night when their candidate pointed out that Republican candidate John McCain signed onto a bill to stop the deregulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a year after the bill was introduced. Obama, after all, didn’t support the bill at all, with good reason—Obama financially benefitted hugely from Fannie and Freddie’s deregulation, the root of our financial agony today.

The Democrats keep screaming that it was deregulation that wrecked out economy, but they don’t dare talk about specifics because the thing that specifically wrecked our economy was the massive disaster of failed mortgages under Fannie and Freddie and that was a Democratic hit job that started in the late 1990s and started leaving its bloody traces on the housing market in 2006. Yes, it was deregulation, alright, at the hands of the Democrats. In fact, fact—not some campaign spiel, but in actual fact—it was the Republicans who fought tooth and nail to stop Fannie and Freddie’s deregulation, but they were up against outrageous accusations of racism by

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Here's a link to the bill that John McCain co-sponsored in 2005-2006 to try to prevent the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage debacles that have contributed greatly to our current financial mess. Whatever happened to the bill? It died in committee. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=109-s20060525-16&bill=s109-190
And here's an interesting YouTube video. Obviously its maker has an agenda, but as far as the legislation and hearings cited in this particular video, his claims are solid.
As with anything you see on YouTube, always fact check. I did, and this one stands up. If you find otherwise, let me know (as if I even have to say that). What the hell were we all thinking about when Franklin Raines was using our tax dollars as a slush fund?   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5z9lD4C2Io
Incidentally, no, I don't share the vidoemaker's views on everything else Obama-related (I certainly don't think Obama is, or ever was, a communist or was interested in being one, etc.--that's crazy talk). Of course, that's not in the video, that's just a little background for you.

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If your jaw didn’t hit the floor when Palin said that she would seek to expand the powers of the vice presidency using Dick Cheney’s model, then you must have been wearing your Hannibal Lecter muzzle for the evening. That, gentle reader, was a deal-breaker. That was a “get you coat and let’s go” moment. She plans to expand the powers of the vice presidency on a ticket where John McCain has more than graciously allowed an admitted neophyte to perch? For many, many voters it has been hard enough to deal with the possibility of Palin stepping into the Oval Office in the event that something untoward happens to McCain. To suggest that she’s going to appropriate some of his power while he’s still alive and kicking is insulting (Full article and comments)

Katie Couric is to journalism what the Muppet Show’s Swedish Chef is to Swedish—she does a meaningless mimicry of it to great effect.

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Usually, women candidates are lauded for their compassion. So, it was odd and disappointing for me—someone who’s gone to bat for Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential pick—to see Palin fail to extend that kind of compassion to Sen. Joe Biden. Please keep in mind, I am a longtime, outspoken, non-fan of Joe Biden. Tonight, Sen. Biden opened up in a way that wasn’t necessary, a way that must not have been pleasant for him, but that he felt, I suppose, might help him to introduce himself to Americans who don’t know him. He recounted what was probably the most heartbreaking day of his life—the day his first wife and their infant daughter were killed in an automobile accident. He was visibly struggling to finish his sentence. Palin, in her response to the same question, had a perfect opportunity to show compassion, in fact, for most of us it would have been the natural thing to do. (Full article and comments)

Last night at the gym, a middle-aged black man who renovates houses for a living held forth on the proposed bailout: “Let them fail!” he raged. “Let them fail! People in this country need to wake up! Those banks and investors that were reckless shouldn’t get one dime, not one dime, from other people who work for a living!” He was mad as hell, and as he moved from bench to platform lugging lots of heavy weights, he continued without drawing a breath, “We have raised a whole generation to believe that they are entitled to everything, that if they make a bad decision, somebody else will bail ‘em out. If I make a bad decision, who bails me out? Nobody. Nobody. And I am sick and tired of people who think they deserve help because they didn’t get what they wanted. And here they go, telling me to vote for somebody because he’s ‘cute’? To hell with that.”

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So, there we were, me and about 70 or more of my fellow citizens, lined up in an orderly fashion at the Quick Trip on Briarcliff Road near Shepherd’s Lane a little after 10 a.m. today, when it seemed to me that the guy filling his small burgundy Chevy pick-up (with DeKalb County plates) had been there for a very long time and was filling his tank in a very odd fashion. He was basically squatting next to the pump away from prying eyes and I could see gas spilling in generous pools on the ground. That’s when I saw the gas cans—four or five of them. Having filled his tank, he was filling gas cans, and as he moved the nozzle from can to can without stopping the pump, generous rivers of gas were pouring onto the concrete, even as the line of cars grew. (Full article and comments)

In answer to the all the emails this morning, here’s how I scored last night’s debate between presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama: Unfortunately for the many Americans still struggling with making a decision, it was a tie. I thought Obama performed better than McCain on the economic part of the debate and that McCain applied, in the words of an NBC commentator, “an ass-whuppin’” to Obama on foreign policy. The problem for McCain in the first part of the debate, the economic part, is that although he is, quite rightly, crusading for a clean-up of Washington’s financial practices, Obama was able to bring the economic debate to the kitchen table and that, my friends, is where presidential races are decided—through kitchen table economics. (Full article and comments)