Jerry’s Ink: Bombs

CABLEVISION BOMB

On Sunday at 6:30 p.m., there was a report that someone had put a bomb in Cablevision’s Syosset office building. Wouldn’t it have been great if, when the terrified Cablevision management called in the bomb threat to the police, the head of the bomb squad had answered:

“We can have someone there on Tuesday between the hours of noon and 6 p.m. Make sure you have someone in the building waiting for us.”

U.N. BOMB

Is there anyone left alive who believes the United Nations can achieve anything? When it was started in 1945 it was a great idea—a place where nations could meet and make love instead of war. Well it has failed, big time. There are still plenty of wars and pain and brutality in the world, and the U.N. is an old, fat, bloated organization for which you and I pay a lion’s share of the cost.

Worldwide, six out of 10 women suffer from some kind physical or sexual abuse. (That’s a number that comes from the U.N.) In some parts of Africa there is savagery and rape and mutilation of innocent people, and the toothless U.N. can do nothing to stop it. Instead, for one week a year, the heads of the 192 member countries visit the U.N., which costs us millions for security, wrecks our traffic, ties New York City in a knot, and forces us to listen when a nut like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad uses the U.N. as a forum to accuse the United States government of being behind 9/11.

The best Barack “Yes We Can” Obama was able to say was Ahmadinejad was “offensive and hateful.” If Obama wanted to get some Americans back on his side, why didn’t he say, “The little creep Ahmadinejad sounds and act like another Hitler. I will not allow him to develop a bomb. I say let the world remember his words at the U.N. when we destroy his nuclear capability and encourage the good people of Iran to toss him out on his ear.”

So here’s another great Della Femina solution: Let’s throw the United Nations out of New York City. Let’s move the U.N. to Detroit. Detroit is a city that can use the money that all those fat, bloated delegates spend in restaurants and on rent. It will bring back Detroit, a city that will put up with the traffic and mess that comes along with the U.N. package. And let’s have some media cooperation and have only CNN cover the U.N. This way, they will not be seen or heard from again.

OBAMA BOMB

Want to play a fun game? Innocently ask someone who was a big Barack Obama supporter two years ago how they feel about him today. Then count: 1…2…3…4…5…6…7… They will look away, look down and then slowly, ever so slowly, say, “Well…” (The “well” gets longer and longer with each passing day of this administration.) Then they have this slight smile that’s somewhere between embarrassment and guilt. Then they say, “I would say I’m…” and then they pause and look away and the silence is deafening.

This is where you can help. Take them off the hook. You say, “Disappointed?” They will jump on the “disappointed” and give you a “sort of.” End the conversation right there—your mother didn’t bring you up to torture people whose hearts are broken.

JIMMY CARTER BOMB

Well, folks, they’re running neck-and-neck: Who will be the worst president in modern history? That sanctimonious “holier than thou” twit Jimmy Carter still has a slight lead, but Barack Obama, with his “let’s ditch capitalism for socialism” agenda, is coming on fast.

BARNEY BOMB

So there I was in a warm shower yesterday morning, thinking about what to write in today’s column, and all of a sudden I thought about Barney Frank. Oh my God, let me explain that. I had no control that over Rep. Barney Frank, the Republican Democrat, flashed before my eyes. I mean, honest, I’m straight, and there I was soaping myself up, and suddenly I was thinking about that short, fat, gay loudmouth. Did I say “gay”? Oh my God. Let the record show that I have quickly added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Once I got over my Barney shock, I realized that he, along with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Chris Dodd, had more to do with the subprime meltdown than anyone. Yet Barack Obama would have you believe our financial problems began and ended with George W. Bush.

Jimmy Carter decided everyone should own their own home, even if they didn’t have a job or a cent in the bank. When he stops punishing bankers and financial executives, Barney admits, “We made a mistake, when we equated providing decent housing for everyone with giving everyone the right to own a home.” But then he talks out of the other side of his face and says, “The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out.” To which I quote Ronald Reagan, who at his inauguration said, “Government is not the answer to our problem; government is the problem.”

From Carter on, the pressure to make more loans to borrowers with weak credit histories was on. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, pushing regulators to punish banks that failed to “meet the credit needs” of “low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.”

Underwriting standards were abandoned and the granting of shoddy loans increased. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this subprime lending by authorizing ever more “flexible” criteria by which high-risk borrowers could qualify for home loans. Uncle Barney was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s No. 1 defender, and when Bush called for an investigation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Barney squelched it. I Googled much of this information from reliable sources on the Internet. There is no reason why Barack Obama doesn’t have the same information at his fingertips.

As for that shower, at first I was so shocked at thinking about Barney Frank while showering that I thought I should see a shrink, but I’ve decided to hold off on the shrink. After all, it’s not as if, when this warm water was rolling over my back and I was soaping myself, I thought of Nancy Pelosi. I’m not that sick.

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