Michelle Malkin » The missing SNL bailout skit — and the Soros connection; Update: SNL does a do-over

The missing SNL bailout skit — and the Soros connection; Update: SNL does a do-over

By Michelle Malkin • October 6, 2008 10:46 PM

Scroll down for updates…still no response from NBC/SNL…the vid clip is currently up on YouTube…watch below before it goes down…10/7 5:20pm Eastern…SNL is editing the skit…

Over the weekend, I watched a hilarious, dead-on, and surprisingly honest skit on Saturday Night Live about the craptastic bailout and its Democrat roots. The skit called out Fannie/Freddie and featured Nancy Pelosi dragging out various sob-story “victims” — who turned out to be a parade of deadbeats and schemers. I was going to post the video for you tonight, but I can’t.

The video has been pulled. Vanished into thin air. (Go here for full transcript and screenshots.)

Where did it go and why?

I have a theory.

One of the rapacious couples featured in the skit was Herbert and Marion Sandler (portrayed by Darrell Hammond and Casey Wilson). Unlike the other composite figures, the Sandlers are a real-life couple.

Also lampooned: Left-wing billionaire George Soros.

As Todd Thurman at Heritage notes, the Sandlers are left-wing moguls who built “a mortgage company whose major product was subprime mortgages and they sold it to Wachovia for $24.2 billion in 2006. And what do the Sandlers do when they are not peddling subprime garbage? They are busy writing checks to leftist groups like the Center for American Progress, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Yes that ACORN.”

The Sandlers are seething over the skit. And George Soros must be livid as well. Anyone else smell a legal threat behind the disappearance of the vid?

Read:

Sandler, 77, spoke to The Associated Press in the San Francisco office of his family’s charitable foundation the morning after NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” broadcast a skit deriding the Sandlers as predatory lenders who had duped unsophisticated borrowers and Wachovia, too. A caption shown on during the sketch skewered the Sandlers as “people who should be shot.”

Although the timing of the interview was coincidental, Sandler was seething after watching a replay of the skit on the Internet.

“I have been listening to this crap for two years,” Sandler said. “We are being unfairly tarred. People have been telling us to speak out for some time, but we didn’t think it was appropriate. That was clearly a mistake.”

Ed Lasky recently reported on how the Sandlers — allies of left-wing billionaire George Soros — helped bring down Wachovia Bank:

Herbert and Marion Sandler, a New York lawyer and Wall Street analyst respectively, bought a small California thrift in 1963 and built it into GDW — one of the largest thrifts in the nation. The company’s business was built on adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs. These were mortgages offered at low “teaser” rates that ratcheted upward as interest rates increased. They were often sold aggressively to unsophisticated home buyers who did not comprehend the vast financial risks they were taking, or who assumed that housing prices would rise high enough to provide a profit to them when they sold their houses. They were targets for lenders peddling mortgages that should have been stamped with a skull and crossbones, for these were among the most seductive and dangerous types of mortgage.

This book of business is the core reason for Wachovia’s current difficulties

The Sandlers knew their business far better than any other person could. Not only were they the founders and major owners, they famously ran the company as a husband and wife team for all these years.

So why did they happen to cash out at precisely the right time? Did they see the handwriting on the wall, realizing the massive risks inherent in the mortgages they originated throughout one of the most overheated real estate markets in the nation’s history? They are not talking, but when smart people cash in some of their chips, it’s rarely a good time to bet against them. Nevertheless, Wachovia bet 24 billion dollars and lost big time.

The collapse was primarily caused by the GDW purchase, which became an albatross around Wachovia’s neck soon after the purchase. “Wachovia found itself in ARM’s Way” was the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article. A huge percentage of these Wachovia ARMs were made to deep subprime borrowers with very poor credit scores. Most of these were “inherited from its ill-timed acquisition of Golden West” at the end of the housing boom in 2006.

The Sandlers have started to invest their billions of dollars politically, in the manner of George Soros, sugar daddy of many far-left wing groups and an early and prominent supporter of Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Soros has developed an empire of so-called 527 groups, putatively independent political activists groups that have influence within the Democratic Party. These 527 groups include the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.Org, Human Rights Watch, Media Matters and a slew of other like-minded groups…

Soros, Lewis, and the Sandlers form a core group of billionaire activists and Democrat partisans who have formed a group called The Democracy Alliance. They realized that they could magnify their power by working in unison and tapping other wealthy donors to further their agenda (the superb Boston Globe article “Follow the money” is a good primer on how money and 527 groups have come together to have a huge impact on politics in America).

The Democracy Alliance is a major avenue to help them achieve their goals. The roster of its growing membership consists of a list of billionaires and mere multi-millionaires who collectively hope to give upwards of 500 million dollars each year to further promote a left-wing agenda. A partial roster of the Democracy Alliance membership can be found here.

Half a billion dollars a year can purchase a great deal of influence.

The Sandlers certainly know quite a bit about leverage from their savings and loan days.

Among the beneficiaries of their largesse: Air America, ACORN (a group that has very close and long lasting ties to Barack Obama and has a long history of engaging in voter fraud. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (basically a private detective group focused on the private faults and foibles of Republicans), Media Matters, a media watchdog group that engages in harsh partisan attacks against media figures and articles it considers supportive of Republicans). The list goes on and on.

They are not merely out to elect Democrats, but to also permanently realign U.S. politics and shift our society and culture in a far-left wing direction…

Read much more from Ed Lasky here.

If you suspect a few high-placed phone calls to NBC led to the bailout skit slipping down the memory hole, you’re not alone.

I just e-mailed NBC and SNL asking why the video was pulled.

You can ask, too. Click here.

***

Terry Ann at The Unfocused reports that NBC.com is deleting questions about the skit from message boards.

Go here for links to the vid (which will probably be yanked) on YouTube, plus full transcript and screenshots.

***

Update 10/7: I’m still awaiting comment from NBC/SNL. AdAge weighs in.

Posted in: ACORN Watch, MoveOn.org, Subprime crisis

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#101

On October 7th, 2008 at 3:53 pm, Danceswithdachshunds said:

Jeddite said:

Cross-posted from Michelle’s other AWOL SNL Skit thread: a copy of the .wmv records by MM commenter Danceswithdachsunds has been uploaded to Filefront for your viewing pleasure (while it’s still up

I didn’t do it! Really, I don’t deserve any credit; I only pointed to the link.
#102

On October 7th, 2008 at 3:56 pm, rpg1616 said:

I saw this skit on Tivo last night and while it is hard to laugh at the subject matter I did think it was dead-on and surprisingly honest. the croud seemed to be shocked to or perhaps the material was just over its collective head.

On another note, I hope Michelle is looking into the Kenyan government making Jerome Corsi “disappear” and any connection this may have to the Obama campaign. This is a much bigger story than an SNL skit and is scarier than the “truth squad” Obama unleashe6d a couple of weeks ago to harrass and intimidate critics. I am very scared for the direction we are headed. The world went crazy about the way Bush treats actual terrorists but yawns at the harrassment and detention of political opponents. With Obama and Putin in charge, we are headed for a vert scary world.
#103

On October 7th, 2008 at 4:04 pm, sonofdy said:

dow down 493 points. 850 Billion well spent.
#104

On October 7th, 2008 at 4:56 pm, Weary Citizen said:

LOL. That was hilarious. Thanks Michelle.

I venture to guess about 50% of all those “poor homeowners taken advantage of by those mean old banks and now losing thier homes”, fit into one of the categoreis parodied in the clip. Add in the other 45% which are probably illegal aliens or non-citizens and you have the “rest of the story”. No idiot who got in over their head should be helped. Pandering fools those dems are. Of course, with OUR money they pander, not theirs.
#105

On October 7th, 2008 at 5:12 pm, Fat Jolly Penguin said:

Great skit — I was falling off my chair laughing, especially at “George Soros: Owner, Democratic Party.”

Even the Bush-bashing was funny (but it would have been more so if the script-writers weren’t serious about it).
#106

On October 7th, 2008 at 5:17 pm, Flyoverman said:

Terry Ann at The Unfocused reports that NBC.com is deleting questions about the skit from message boards.

Was Orewell a visionary or what?

“As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube.

Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconsicious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.”
#107

On October 7th, 2008 at 5:27 pm, vickisoup said:

At the risk of stating the obvious, not all ARM’s are hideous and predatory.
Some are reasonable and some good deals have been made for the borrower who would have otherwise had difficulty buying a home.
ARM’s adjust downward, too, as has the one for my HOA on which I served as a boardmember for a while.
But moving now to ARM’s that ARE hideous and predatory, why isn’t everyone screaming about our credit cards that have been going insane??
I just closed my Discover card account because they sent me a letter advising that they were increasing my interest rate from 3.9% to over 30% even on my outstanding balance, and that this had nothing to do with my credit profile. Because I closed my account, they cannot make the increase.
But still. If I had not refused the new term by a date certain, I would have been stuck.
#108

On October 7th, 2008 at 5:50 pm, WarEagle82 said:

I can’t believe SNL would air THAT? Did the NOT get the DNC talking points about NOT admitting the truth?

I am surprised SNL writters haven’t been “disappeared” over this.
#109

On October 7th, 2008 at 6:16 pm, av8tr said:

Spot-on!
I wonder how much inside info they had in preparing it. I’m sure the principals’s were nervous. Some with the ability to have NBC yank/edit it.
#110

On October 7th, 2008 at 6:45 pm, Marine_NCO said:

original uncut version here:
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/mystery-of-missing-snl-bailout-skit-explained-nbccom-took-it-down-for-legal-reasons-will-put-back-up-edited-version-today/
#111

On October 7th, 2008 at 7:01 pm, Ty85719 said:

UPDATE: The video no longer works…again - all comments have been disabled. Obama really does have quite a nice “clean up crew.”
#112

On October 7th, 2008 at 7:01 pm, SirKnob said:

I found a full copy on youtube, saved it for future reference Dang first amendment hating, no tolerance, liberals. I would say they can’t take a joke, but look who they are running for president
#113

On October 7th, 2008 at 7:26 pm, allrsn said:

On October 7th, 2008 at 3:26 pm, emjem24 said:

Censorship. This is not the first and will not be the last. If Obama is elected expect to become law.
#114

On October 7th, 2008 at 7:35 pm, Sean said:

I thought we EVIL conservatives were the ones squashing free speech? If these liberal comedians excuse for not making fun of Islamic extremist is that they are worried about losing their head, then what is their excuse for not going after these liberal power brokers?
#115

On October 7th, 2008 at 7:46 pm, Uncle Monkey said:

Video Pulled!
#116

On October 7th, 2008 at 7:48 pm, Uncle Monkey said:

On October 7th, 2008 at 7:01 pm, Ty85719 said:
UPDATE: The video no longer works…again - all comments have been disabled. Obama really does have quite a nice “clean up crew.”

No kidding! I literally had just watched it again - and then was sharing it with a “lefty” when *poof*
#117

On October 7th, 2008 at 8:30 pm, 4USA said:

Did anyone honestly think that the idiots on SNL would realize the impact of an honest portrayal? They’re usually clueless and this is no exception. They stumbled onto the truth and their masters pulled it.

The fact that it was pulled would be enough for most independent minded individuals to understand, but alas, they are still clueless.

They are truly, useful idiots. The sad part is that they accept their role, enthusiastically.