Oh, right. People have suggested this sort of thing forever, and I keep on forgetting.

An overnight open thread for insomniacs.

If I forget to do it, anyone with an open blog login can just throw one up around 11 or twelve or so.

I've been thinking about just declaring Open Blog every night in the hours I'm done or asleep, like from 10 pm to 10 am.

Anyone think that's a bad idea?

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 PM | Comments (231)
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Due to financial jitters.

If the public only knew.

Posted by: Ace at 08:38 PM | Comments (153)
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So, what if Newt Gingrich is right, the sky is not falling and the bailout is moving too fast and furious?

Warren Buffet rides to the rescue to push back, if not actually save, the imminent demise of the US financial market. The Japanese investors are buying up foreign assets of the failing institutions.

Maybe there is a free market cure to this mess after all?

Posted by: Open Blog at 08:24 PM | Comments (18)
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Note that Japanese markets may not actually be plunging.

Clay Aiken is finally confirming what many people already knew: He's gay. The cover of the latest People magazine shows Aiken holding his infant son, Parker Foster Aiken, with the headline: "Yes, I'm Gay." The cover also has the quote: "I cannot raise a child to lie or hide things."

Rumors first surfaced about the American Idol finalist when people realized he looked like this:

Bernacke and Paulsen have issued a statement that investors should not panic. The markets, they say, have already "substantially priced-in the Clay Aiken Gay risk."

Barney Frank, on the other hand, announced "This is further evidence that capitalism does not work."

Posted by: Ace at 08:11 PM | Comments (55)
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Via Hotair

Biden to lawyers: You'd have to be brain dead not to help.

Biden said that he's "done more than any other senator combined" for trial lawyers.

"There are two people -- you've heard me say it before -- two groups that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate," Biden said. "It's you and organized labor. That's it. That is it. So, mark my words, mark my words, if we lose this election, you are going to continue to see a continuation of the onslaught on everything we care about. For real. For real. So, I'm not only thanking you for your help. I would think you're all absolutely brain-dead if you didn't help. And I mean it."

You just have to wonder how many states Uncle Joe thinks the Democrats are going to have rig..er..excuse me...fight for by challenging every damn vote by anyone who didn't pull the lever for The Messiah.

Heretics.

But, what really gets me is the "only people that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate". There are five people in my family who come to mind when I think about standing between me and "the barbarians at the gate". Their names did not end with "esq". They begin with "Sgt", "Cpt", "E4", "T2" and "S1".

Dear Joe,

Maybe you can get one of your lawyer friends to translate those "code" words for you?

Until then, F*ck off.

Update: Now that I've pissed off our Lawyer friends, I will do my Biden impression and say, "Present company excluded, God love ya'."

Posted by: Open Blog at 07:30 PM | Comments (51)
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Good video report from Jim Angel at FoxNews.

It should be noted that "Republicans" do not include "McCain." Although McCain saw this crisis coming, and attempted to avert it, he is now foolishly engaging in demogogic populism, blaming Wall Street for "forcing" loans on poor people who coudn't afford them.

He knows better. But he's too foolish to know the truth is actually on his side. He doesn't need to demogogue up Wall Street. This was a fifteen year campaign by the Democrats, ACORN, and Fannie and Freddie's executives to loosen up mortgage requirements to the point where there simply where no requirements at all.

Net result? Trillions of federally guaranteed dollars flow into the housing market that shouldn't have been there -- suddenly buying a house becomes the easiest possible purchase you can make. All you need is a signature and a smile.

If the federal government were guaranteeing a trillion new dollars for no-money down car purchases with no credit checks or proof of employment or income, what do you think would happen to the price of cars?

They'd triple. For a while.

Housing market turns into dangerously overinflated bubble. Which is what always happens when a trillion fresh, cheap, easy dollars flow into a sector and begin chasing the same limited pool of goods.

Millions of credit-poor homebuyers -- with erratic and unverified incomes -- now have mortgages with payements well out of their range. But at least the homes are still worth their selling price... so if they default on a $350,000 house, no sweat, the bank now owns the $350,000 house, which can be sold for $350,000 to someone else.

But finally the bubble bursts -- and now all those credit-poor, erratic income homeowners now have mortgages for $350,000 on houses actually worth $150,000.

So what do they do? They walk away or stop paying. Which makes perfect economic sense.

Leaving Fannie and Freddie guaranteeing a trillion in bad mortgages. Which means you're guaranteeing them.

The bank made a $350,000 payment to the home-seller -- but now has only a $150,000 home to show for it. Uh-oh.

You the taxpayer just went on the hook for that $200,000 loss.

Wall Street's contribution? They stupidly bought up derivatives based on these junk mortgages, thus putting themselves, and the entire financial system, at dire risk.

But they didn't create the risk. The stupidly bought into the risk, but they didn't create it.

It was Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, ACORN, Franklin Raines, Penny Pritzker, Jim Johnson, and of course Barack Hussein Obama who actually built the bomb.

And I Repeat... Even now, the lisping marble-mouthed shufferin'-shucatash socialist moron Barney Frank is still fighting to federally guarantee the zero-money-down "seller financed" down payment mortgages that got us into this mess.

Because he's fucking stupid. As are most Democrats. They have no idea how money is made or how services and goods are exchanged. All they know is they want to distribute those services and goods more "fairly."

He doesn't agree with the basic idea that People who don't have enough money to afford a house shouldn't have one. He honestly believes that idea is "unfair."

Everyone should have a house. People who can't afford them most of all.

And if you tell him doing so will cost the government another 1-2 trillion in ten years, and will put the economy in crisis again, he'd say, "Fine." It's a fair trade as far as he's concerned.

Because who's paying that 1-2 trillion? People who have money. If provoking a crisis is the only manner to get the wealth distribution he craves, that's fine by him.

Posted by: Ace at 04:04 PM | Comments (242)
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I think they're lying. I think they produced this video in house, then realized what a stinking pile of lies it was, and so coudn't run it themselves.

So they sent it to their friends (and colleagues) at Winner & Associates and told them "Take it viral."

And Ethan Winner passed it to his friend Geekesque to spread on Daily Kos. (Geekesque denies this, incidentally: But not convincingly. Athough he's pretty afraid I'll out him (though I won't, and I told him so), when I tell him how I know he's in LA, a quarter of a mile from Winner & Associates, he tells me no, check my IP, I'm in New York -- strange that someone wanting to protect his identity would try to bluff me off out of the wrong city and put me on track as to the right city.)

Whether the above can be proved, I don't know. But their voice-over woman sounds exactly like Axelrod's.

As far as McCain's involvement: Let me personally say I myself tried to get help from anyone in the McCain camp -- just the name of a lawyer who might help -- and got no response at all. I only wrote because Rusty had told me "they never answered me." So I figured I, Conservative Blogger of the Year Ace of Spades, could get an answer.

None.

So the people responsibe for the orginal smear are now making fresh smears.

Ethan Winner has not explained to us who his Mystery Voice-Over Woman is. Of course he will not. He can't.

Geekesque, by the way, has shut down his viral smeal internet group.

Odd that all the rats have abandoned ship at pretty much the exact same time.

I guess viral attacks aren't where it's at in 2008 anymore.

Posted by: Ace at 03:49 PM | Comments (66)
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Taking a look at the books of Fannie and Freddie (and also AIG and Lehman) a bit, um, late.

Thanks to TomM for the story and the headline.

Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (31)
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Oh yeah.

They're not going to lose this one, no matter what the vote tallies say.

Posted by: Ace at 03:07 PM | Comments (40)
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So says the AP. It's unknown what comments about Zionist murderers may have been ommitted from Democratic statements.

House Democrats will allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week.

Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey is telling reporters that language continuing the moratorium will be omitted this year from a spending bill to keep the government in operating funds after Congress recesses for the election.

That's the continuing resolution dealio they had earlier talked about adding the extention to.

Once more for the sake of tradition: This is the first action... of our new administration... and the action is called... Drilling....

Thanks to TomM.

Posted by: Ace at 02:49 PM | Comments (32)
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