Free Republic

Remember when the bailout was going to cost $700 million? Yeah, not so much. Reuters: Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers' total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday. The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the increase was due largely to the government's pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB) and to guarantee more mortgages to the support the housing market. Of course, Fannie and Freddie went completely untouched in financial reform.

Noted economist Thomas Sowell has written extensively on the “Vision of the Anointed” — intellectuals’ supreme confidence in their own superior knowledge and virtue that leads them to believe that they are an anointed elite qualified to make decisions for the rest of us to lead humanity to a better life. And, boy, was that ever on display in the “Journolist,” a now-defunct listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists. The Daily Caller has managed to get ahold of some Journolist e-mails, and today’s story reveals that some members wanted Fox News off the air:

Countrywide probe snares Fannie, Freddie execs By: Jake Sherman July 20, 2010 02:34 PM EDT Employees at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — including top executives — received more than 170 cut rate loans from Countrywide Financial, according to a congressional probe, the latest accusation that the lender tried to curry influence with people in power. The investigation revealed that Fannie Mae employees — including an assistant to the CEO, a government relations lobbyist and a vice president for sales — received 153 favorable loans, while 20 VIP loans were issued to employees at Freddie Mac. Countrywide Financial collapsed in...

Robin Meas (sp?) thinks that 1818 was in the eighteenth century. This morning, around 6:30, I switched over to HNN when Fox broke for a commericial. Robin, the blow-up doll, was reporting a story about a man who had found a valuable old Bible at a garbage dump. The shot clearly showed the published date as 1818, but Robin said that it was printed in the eighteenth century.