Certainly the guilt vote provided an edge to an individual 1) without much of a track record and 2) who has demonstrated little sound judgement, past 20 years. But as black scholar Shelby Steele noted, "Obama will always be a bargainer, a person who relieves the anxieties of white people about race."
The economy provided the clinch. The greatest irony is that the very mess that tipped the scales in Obama’s favor was birthed by the Democratic party leadership’s successful efforts to block meaningful reform of Fannie & Freddie, reform that would have prevented the twin’s excesses and thus the crisis. Obama and others went along because the twins were a cash cow to them. We have detailed this process in several past sketches.
Only one Dem has so far apologized. Arthur Davis, D-Ala. now admits Democrats were in error: "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues, I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie: We were wrong."
From the IBD 5/06: After years of Democrats blocking legislation, Sens. Hagel, Sununu, Dole and McCain wrote a letter to Majority Leader Bill Frist demanding that GSE regulatory reform be "enacted this year" to avoid "the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole." Nice try guys.
We don’t expect the masses to come up with this stuff on their own (and pure partisans don’t care) but we did expect McCain and others to explain it to them - bullet points endlessly repeated throughout the campaign would have done the job. Who it was exactly that was responsible for the Heart of Darkness, who it was that put their 401K’s in the sewer. The campaign had a silver bullet and refused to use it.
Robert Craven
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
The Willfully Blind
Even Obama’s most ardent admirers admit that he has accomplished little in his life by the way of setting a conventional track record for president. Tough to argue with that one. So what else could there be? What other characteristics are there to qualify an individual for president given that individual is without a track record? Well, judgement, character, courage and ability-of-decisive-action to name four. Do these apply in Obama’s case? Apparently his supporters think so. They must trust Obama to have the courage to act, to make sound decisions, to have a claim on character.
Let’s take a look. Rev Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions but reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort. Obama gave $ to both of them. How does this lend support to the man, give evidence of judgement? Or earlier, while in school, "I chose my friends carefully," he writes, "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets (what?)". This gives evidence of his far-left disposition but what else? Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools-- an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed. Where is the common sense in this one?
When Obama had a chance to end the war in Iraq, he voted backwards. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong."
When Obama had a chance to reform Fannie & Freddie, to endorse regulations which would have prevented the current crisis (and saved out lefty friends’ 401K’s) he voted to block that legislation. How is this a reflection of judgement? He knew better but lacked the courage to cross party lines. During his Illinois political career, when on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged them and voted merely "present". How does that reflect ability of decisive action, a key requirement of any commander-in-chief? To govern is to choose, to make tough choices. What have we missed? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? This reflects courage or character?
Instead, as he has done all his life, a president Obama (perish the thought) will take the path of least resistance. Let us apply that to foreign affairs. Here the thought of an Obama adm is frightening. An Obama presidency, combined with Pelosi’s House and Reid’s Senate would leave America with the most left-wing government of any major Western democracy. An Obama administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a "point of no return," the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America ever. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence. Take the easy option, hold hands and sing Kumbayya.
So what else is there? Really folks, isn’t this guy just an empty suit, aside from ego and mouth?
Obama’s sudden rise to leading contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona from that of his past. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced the left, some independents and most blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent. Yet is it not also a warning about his credibility? And how has he done this? As we have highlighted repeatedly, his run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He gets a pass. He flatters whites; as the black scholar Shelby Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
There can be no other explanation.
Finally, as Noonan mused the other day about an Obama victory - "Like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what?"
Robert Craven
Let’s take a look. Rev Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions but reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort. Obama gave $ to both of them. How does this lend support to the man, give evidence of judgement? Or earlier, while in school, "I chose my friends carefully," he writes, "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets (what?)". This gives evidence of his far-left disposition but what else? Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools-- an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed. Where is the common sense in this one?
When Obama had a chance to end the war in Iraq, he voted backwards. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong."
When Obama had a chance to reform Fannie & Freddie, to endorse regulations which would have prevented the current crisis (and saved out lefty friends’ 401K’s) he voted to block that legislation. How is this a reflection of judgement? He knew better but lacked the courage to cross party lines. During his Illinois political career, when on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged them and voted merely "present". How does that reflect ability of decisive action, a key requirement of any commander-in-chief? To govern is to choose, to make tough choices. What have we missed? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? This reflects courage or character?
Instead, as he has done all his life, a president Obama (perish the thought) will take the path of least resistance. Let us apply that to foreign affairs. Here the thought of an Obama adm is frightening. An Obama presidency, combined with Pelosi’s House and Reid’s Senate would leave America with the most left-wing government of any major Western democracy. An Obama administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a "point of no return," the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America ever. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence. Take the easy option, hold hands and sing Kumbayya.
So what else is there? Really folks, isn’t this guy just an empty suit, aside from ego and mouth?
Obama’s sudden rise to leading contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona from that of his past. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced the left, some independents and most blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent. Yet is it not also a warning about his credibility? And how has he done this? As we have highlighted repeatedly, his run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He gets a pass. He flatters whites; as the black scholar Shelby Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
There can be no other explanation.
Finally, as Noonan mused the other day about an Obama victory - "Like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what?"
Robert Craven
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Making Stalin Proud
"In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate—look to his character." — Noah Webster
Naturally partisans will vote for a chimp. But for a good part of the electorate (independents, moderates) we are amazed that they apparently do not see the fraud in what Obama is saying. The Hoover Institute economist Thomas Sowell is right when he says that, "Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe." Obama has so far accomplished that brilliantly.
We have highlighted in earlier sketches the obvious disparity between what Obama pretends to be and what he has been. For example we all know about Obama’s patron saint in Chicago - Bill Ayers, the guy who forty years ago was in favor of blowing up public buildings until he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within. For anyone who can read, it’s all there. But we have also highlighted just why Obama’s sordid background does not stick - white liberal guilt. Obama, the empty suit, gets a pass. If Obama wins, all of Marin County will be unburdened of its sins.
We have been told by a friend from the left (now deceased) that Obama, "..is the better candidate with better solutions to today’s issues." OK Fair enough. What issues? Let’s take matters of the world first, as few would argue that these are most senior on the list. "People of the world," declared Senator Obama at his self-worship service in Germany, "look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." Mark Steyn heard that bit and responded, "No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people — the Barack Obamas of the day — were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity." The wall came down not because "the world stood as one" but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire would have survived and the wall would still be standing. Senator Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing Kumbyya.
Sorry Obama fans, you are being taken for a ride. You would make Stalin proud. To govern is to be able to make choices, hard ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he went along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – ie, the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex — voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely "present"?
Too much.
Robert Craven
Naturally partisans will vote for a chimp. But for a good part of the electorate (independents, moderates) we are amazed that they apparently do not see the fraud in what Obama is saying. The Hoover Institute economist Thomas Sowell is right when he says that, "Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe." Obama has so far accomplished that brilliantly.
We have highlighted in earlier sketches the obvious disparity between what Obama pretends to be and what he has been. For example we all know about Obama’s patron saint in Chicago - Bill Ayers, the guy who forty years ago was in favor of blowing up public buildings until he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within. For anyone who can read, it’s all there. But we have also highlighted just why Obama’s sordid background does not stick - white liberal guilt. Obama, the empty suit, gets a pass. If Obama wins, all of Marin County will be unburdened of its sins.
We have been told by a friend from the left (now deceased) that Obama, "..is the better candidate with better solutions to today’s issues." OK Fair enough. What issues? Let’s take matters of the world first, as few would argue that these are most senior on the list. "People of the world," declared Senator Obama at his self-worship service in Germany, "look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." Mark Steyn heard that bit and responded, "No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people — the Barack Obamas of the day — were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity." The wall came down not because "the world stood as one" but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire would have survived and the wall would still be standing. Senator Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing Kumbyya.
Sorry Obama fans, you are being taken for a ride. You would make Stalin proud. To govern is to be able to make choices, hard ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he went along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – ie, the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex — voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely "present"?
Too much.
Robert Craven
Friday, October 24, 2008
That Was Easy
If Obama wins he will be the least prepared, least qualified person to ever occupy the White House. Observers wonder just how this individual has engineered such a remarkable escape from his past.
We along with others have detailed the likes of Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Rezko, ACORN, Chicago politics, all the rest. These are not just individuals or organizations who/which happened to be in the same place at the same time as Obama. These are people/groups he sought out, with whom he chose to ally himself for years and where on occasion serious money changed hands. These are allies chosen deliberately for a reason which most will admit says something about the person. Yet few are bothered.
His motto is about "change." But Obama was not on the side of "change" when reformers were trying to clean up the corrupt, machine politics in Chicago. Instead he came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates. Not a problem; instead of issuing explicit denials about his shady past, he gives speeches that sound so moderate, so nuanced and lofty that even rational people go for them. He preaches unity. But everything about Obama’s history shows he was a polarizer, not a unifier. That is what "community organizers" do, they polarize - create a sense of grievance, envy and resentment. And that is what he did when spending the money of the Woods Fund, bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. And that is what he did when he gave $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, or, were Wright’s sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up the message?
As a US senator he opposed the Republican effort to reform Fannie & Freddie. It was the aggressive buying of junk mortgages by the twins, the poor choices of these two GSE’s that are largely to blame for our current crisis. The twins were catalysts that drew in the sharks; crooked officials cooked the books to get giant bonuses and they got away with it by lavishing money on Democratic legislators. Obama was the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie. And Obama’s campaign sought the advice of the disgraced former CEO of Fannie, Frank Raines. The twins and Raines were at the center of our Heart of Darkness - the "mess in Washington" that Obama is going to try to clean up under the banner of "change". Too much. (Not happy with your 401K and want to vent? Start with Dodd, Frank and Obama.)
Nothing sticks to this charismatic charlatan. He’s not held accountable by a fawning electorate. Why? Simple. White liberal guilt trumps all of it. If Obama were a white guy he wouldn’t have a snow ball’s chance in hell of taking the White House.
That was easy.
Robert Craven
We along with others have detailed the likes of Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Rezko, ACORN, Chicago politics, all the rest. These are not just individuals or organizations who/which happened to be in the same place at the same time as Obama. These are people/groups he sought out, with whom he chose to ally himself for years and where on occasion serious money changed hands. These are allies chosen deliberately for a reason which most will admit says something about the person. Yet few are bothered.
His motto is about "change." But Obama was not on the side of "change" when reformers were trying to clean up the corrupt, machine politics in Chicago. Instead he came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates. Not a problem; instead of issuing explicit denials about his shady past, he gives speeches that sound so moderate, so nuanced and lofty that even rational people go for them. He preaches unity. But everything about Obama’s history shows he was a polarizer, not a unifier. That is what "community organizers" do, they polarize - create a sense of grievance, envy and resentment. And that is what he did when spending the money of the Woods Fund, bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. And that is what he did when he gave $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, or, were Wright’s sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up the message?
As a US senator he opposed the Republican effort to reform Fannie & Freddie. It was the aggressive buying of junk mortgages by the twins, the poor choices of these two GSE’s that are largely to blame for our current crisis. The twins were catalysts that drew in the sharks; crooked officials cooked the books to get giant bonuses and they got away with it by lavishing money on Democratic legislators. Obama was the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie. And Obama’s campaign sought the advice of the disgraced former CEO of Fannie, Frank Raines. The twins and Raines were at the center of our Heart of Darkness - the "mess in Washington" that Obama is going to try to clean up under the banner of "change". Too much. (Not happy with your 401K and want to vent? Start with Dodd, Frank and Obama.)
Nothing sticks to this charismatic charlatan. He’s not held accountable by a fawning electorate. Why? Simple. White liberal guilt trumps all of it. If Obama were a white guy he wouldn’t have a snow ball’s chance in hell of taking the White House.
That was easy.
Robert Craven
Thursday, October 9, 2008
No Decency?
We have maintained that the core issue or trigger to the current crisis was the past decade’s enabling of the Fn/Fr twins by the Democrats. We have connected the dots for our readers to this Heart of Darkness. It’s all fairly obvious. Usually both are to blame, at least in shades; this time one party and one party only is responsible for the near-immediate 20 - 30% decline in the net worth of most Americans.
And we wondered - have the Democrats no decency? How can any literate Democrat not cringe? Even an acknowledgment would work as a start.
Sure enough, from Artur Davis, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership, when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."
Thank you Mr Davis.
Robert Craven
And we wondered - have the Democrats no decency? How can any literate Democrat not cringe? Even an acknowledgment would work as a start.
Sure enough, from Artur Davis, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership, when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."
Thank you Mr Davis.
Robert Craven
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
ACORN, Obama and This Mess
Background: The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act called on banks to increase lending in poor and minority neighborhoods. At the outset it’s requirements were vague. Then in 1990 along came a group of community organizers called ACORN. ACORN eventually figured out how to lever the CRA against potential lenders. But they needed to change Fan & Fred policy too. From the Chi Trib, "Housing activists pushed hard to improve housing for the poor by extracting greater financial support from Fannie and Freddie." That is, ACORN’s early effort (‘90 & ‘91) to pressure banks was still being hamstrung by the twins’ then relatively conservative standards - the twins would not take lenders out of anything but pretty solid paper, not mortgages backed by welfare payments or the neighborhood’s best jump shot.
In one of the first book-length scholarly studies of ACORN called Organizing Urban America, Rutgers political scientist Heidi Swarts describes this group, so dear to Obama, as "oppositional outlaws." Swarts, a supporter of ACORN, states that its members think of themselves as "militants unafraid to confront the powers that be." "This is reinforced by contentious action," she continues. "ACORN protestors break into private offices, show up at a banker’s home to intimidate his family, pour protestors into bank lobbies, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers."
ACORN’s progress was linked to its Democratic allies. ACORN did poorly under the Bush adm but with the advent of the Clinton administration ACORN’s efforts began to bear fruit. Standards at the twins were lowered. In 1992 ACORN kicked up its pressure tactics. Banks caved; ironically they became ACORN’s best allies to get Fan&Fred to loosen even further so they (lenders) could be taken out of junk loans they made under pressure. As Stanley Kurtz, sr fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Institute explains, "..by 1993 the grand alliance of ACORN, national Democrats and local bankers, looking for someone to lessen the risks put on them by ACORN’s leveraging of the CRA, united to pressure Fannie & Freddie to loosen credit standards...."
At first the twins resisted. Then with the street’s help they figured out that there was a hell of a lot of $ in it for them and gladly cooperated. They became speculators. In June 1995 Clinton announced the new program for raising home ownership in American to an all time high, a plan that looked to commit $1 trl to low income and minorities, or about ½ of the twins’ portfolio at that time. Then it was really off to the races for ACORN. For the next 12 years, at both local and national levels ACORN served as the catalyst, levering 1) mandates created by the CRA and 2) their pull with Democratic politicians to force the twins into an expanding pattern of high risk loans. (In 1995, Obama, as director of Chicago’s Woods Fund, successfully pushed for a major expansion of $ assistance for ACORN in that region.) Thus, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess, that is, Obama and his co-workers at ACORN used the CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle the twins and thus the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard for any basic financial standards.
Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie, knowing that the answer was more regulation, not less (see our last sketch under US Economy). This is not the private sector. Fannie and Freddie are government creations that pay their executives millions of dollars but were shielded with our tax money from suffering the downside risk of the market. They engaged in risky hedge-fund style financing. Deregulation is about keeping the government from hobbling the private sector and hamstringing its ingenuity and productivity; deregulation does not apply to the twins.
Republican attempts at reform in 1999 failed. In 2003, when Alan Greenspan testified about how Fannie and Freddie’s loose practices could endanger our financial system but it was Democrat Barney Frank who said these institutions were fundamentally sound, and should be more aggressive in getting loans to low-income people. At the House Financial Services Comm hearing of Sep/25/03, Rep Frank said, "I do not think I want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC (Comptroller) and OTS (Thrift Supervision). I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing..." Too much.
As we highlighted earlier, in 2005 a Republican reform (S-190) passed the Senate Banking Committee on a party-line vote, only to be blocked by Democrats from passing in the full Senate. And in 2006 when John McCain spoke on the Senate floor of the need to reform Fannie and Freddie immediately, Democrats (including Obama) would not respond. Naturally. The twins have been a cash cow for the left.
The Democrats are squarely to blame. Some may deny that but if so they are not engaged in an exercise of intellectual honesty. Democrats have resisted all attempts at reforming Fannie and Freddie; they pushed those organizations to become more and more reckless in their policies. The investments carrying those tainted mortgages went from bad to worse. Now we’re in a crisis and on the verge of a meltdown. This is inexcusable. If this is explained to voters Obama will loose. This is McCain’s silver bullet. If he does not use it he does not deserve to win.
Robert Craven
In one of the first book-length scholarly studies of ACORN called Organizing Urban America, Rutgers political scientist Heidi Swarts describes this group, so dear to Obama, as "oppositional outlaws." Swarts, a supporter of ACORN, states that its members think of themselves as "militants unafraid to confront the powers that be." "This is reinforced by contentious action," she continues. "ACORN protestors break into private offices, show up at a banker’s home to intimidate his family, pour protestors into bank lobbies, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers."
ACORN’s progress was linked to its Democratic allies. ACORN did poorly under the Bush adm but with the advent of the Clinton administration ACORN’s efforts began to bear fruit. Standards at the twins were lowered. In 1992 ACORN kicked up its pressure tactics. Banks caved; ironically they became ACORN’s best allies to get Fan&Fred to loosen even further so they (lenders) could be taken out of junk loans they made under pressure. As Stanley Kurtz, sr fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Institute explains, "..by 1993 the grand alliance of ACORN, national Democrats and local bankers, looking for someone to lessen the risks put on them by ACORN’s leveraging of the CRA, united to pressure Fannie & Freddie to loosen credit standards...."
At first the twins resisted. Then with the street’s help they figured out that there was a hell of a lot of $ in it for them and gladly cooperated. They became speculators. In June 1995 Clinton announced the new program for raising home ownership in American to an all time high, a plan that looked to commit $1 trl to low income and minorities, or about ½ of the twins’ portfolio at that time. Then it was really off to the races for ACORN. For the next 12 years, at both local and national levels ACORN served as the catalyst, levering 1) mandates created by the CRA and 2) their pull with Democratic politicians to force the twins into an expanding pattern of high risk loans. (In 1995, Obama, as director of Chicago’s Woods Fund, successfully pushed for a major expansion of $ assistance for ACORN in that region.) Thus, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess, that is, Obama and his co-workers at ACORN used the CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle the twins and thus the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard for any basic financial standards.
Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie, knowing that the answer was more regulation, not less (see our last sketch under US Economy). This is not the private sector. Fannie and Freddie are government creations that pay their executives millions of dollars but were shielded with our tax money from suffering the downside risk of the market. They engaged in risky hedge-fund style financing. Deregulation is about keeping the government from hobbling the private sector and hamstringing its ingenuity and productivity; deregulation does not apply to the twins.
Republican attempts at reform in 1999 failed. In 2003, when Alan Greenspan testified about how Fannie and Freddie’s loose practices could endanger our financial system but it was Democrat Barney Frank who said these institutions were fundamentally sound, and should be more aggressive in getting loans to low-income people. At the House Financial Services Comm hearing of Sep/25/03, Rep Frank said, "I do not think I want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC (Comptroller) and OTS (Thrift Supervision). I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing..." Too much.
As we highlighted earlier, in 2005 a Republican reform (S-190) passed the Senate Banking Committee on a party-line vote, only to be blocked by Democrats from passing in the full Senate. And in 2006 when John McCain spoke on the Senate floor of the need to reform Fannie and Freddie immediately, Democrats (including Obama) would not respond. Naturally. The twins have been a cash cow for the left.
The Democrats are squarely to blame. Some may deny that but if so they are not engaged in an exercise of intellectual honesty. Democrats have resisted all attempts at reforming Fannie and Freddie; they pushed those organizations to become more and more reckless in their policies. The investments carrying those tainted mortgages went from bad to worse. Now we’re in a crisis and on the verge of a meltdown. This is inexcusable. If this is explained to voters Obama will loose. This is McCain’s silver bullet. If he does not use it he does not deserve to win.
Robert Craven
Friday, October 3, 2008
THANK YOU ANDREW JOHNSON
OK, sure, Johnson was on the sauce the rainy morning of Mar/4/1865 and ya, he rambled through his oath, for 20 minutes speaking incoherently, trying at one point to address each secretary by name - Mr. Stanton, Mr. Seward - down the ranks, until he reached Mr. Wells, whose name he could not remember. No problem; he turned to an aide and asked loudly, "What’s the name of the Secty of the Navy?" Gideon Wells them whispered to Stanton that "Johnson’s either drunk or crazy." Well, certainly drunk but not crazy: In 1867 Johnson hurried through the purchase of Alaska. If he hadn’t, Sarah Palin would be Canadian.
From the moment Palin shook Biden’s hand and the microphone picked up, "Hey, can I call you Joe?" - the night belonged to her. She was clear and accurate on foreign policy, crystal clear on the war; her scolding Biden and Obama for waving the white flag was spot on. On education, on the economy, she was running on all cylinders. As we predicted, she did not allow Biden to pull her into territory familiar to him - Washington, insider stuff (that which would gag the Founders). Instead she played the outside game.
She personally connected with the viewer, was comfortable and looked directly at the audience.
Knowing that Palin would hand Biden his equipment we began to feel for the guy, even wanting her to ease off a tad, understanding that he is not fair game. We recalled the interview by Couric on "CBS Ev News". Biden said that when the stock market crashed FDR went on TV and told his audience all about it. Of course, this was the wrong president; oh, and then that little bit about TV. Whoa now. Sure enough, Biden was consistent in the debate, saying for example that it is "wrong, wrong, wrong" that Obama said he would sit down with the Iranian president but then going right on to defend Obama’s willingness to do it. Hmmm?
One pal from the left reminded us the other day of the smear of Palin by Kathleen Parker, Parker a reasonably well known conservative commentator who claimed Palin would be challenged to string two sentences together. Really? "Some women are just catty that way," noted another female pundit. "The more accomplished and popular and beautiful the woman in question is, the more they hate her." Seems to fit. So much for Parker; so much for Biden.
Robert Craven
From the moment Palin shook Biden’s hand and the microphone picked up, "Hey, can I call you Joe?" - the night belonged to her. She was clear and accurate on foreign policy, crystal clear on the war; her scolding Biden and Obama for waving the white flag was spot on. On education, on the economy, she was running on all cylinders. As we predicted, she did not allow Biden to pull her into territory familiar to him - Washington, insider stuff (that which would gag the Founders). Instead she played the outside game.
She personally connected with the viewer, was comfortable and looked directly at the audience.
Knowing that Palin would hand Biden his equipment we began to feel for the guy, even wanting her to ease off a tad, understanding that he is not fair game. We recalled the interview by Couric on "CBS Ev News". Biden said that when the stock market crashed FDR went on TV and told his audience all about it. Of course, this was the wrong president; oh, and then that little bit about TV. Whoa now. Sure enough, Biden was consistent in the debate, saying for example that it is "wrong, wrong, wrong" that Obama said he would sit down with the Iranian president but then going right on to defend Obama’s willingness to do it. Hmmm?
One pal from the left reminded us the other day of the smear of Palin by Kathleen Parker, Parker a reasonably well known conservative commentator who claimed Palin would be challenged to string two sentences together. Really? "Some women are just catty that way," noted another female pundit. "The more accomplished and popular and beautiful the woman in question is, the more they hate her." Seems to fit. So much for Parker; so much for Biden.
Robert Craven
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