Results matching “barney” from Chatham RTC Election2008

We have detailed on several occasions that the present worldwide financial crisis can be traced to Democratic housing policies encouraging and then requiring banks to make mortgage loans to people who really couldn't afford them. Present in the early stages of the drive to force banks to make such loans was Barack Obama, then a schooled community organizer training ACORN operatives in Chicago how to intimidate banks and bankers into making loans they shouldn't. That was back in 1991. Obama-supporting ACORN was among the organizations that pressed the Clinton Administration to toughen up the penalties on banks that "weren't making enough" subprime loans. (ACORN worked for Obama in his first run for Illinois Senate in 1996.)

Understandably, banks didn't want to make loans that had a strong chance of going bad. They wanted to get rid of them. So ACORN spent tens of thousands of dollars lobbying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up subprime loans and sell them around the world as U.S. government securities. Also pressing Fannie and Freddie was Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and the top Democrat in the House of Representatives on financial matters. Subprime loans rocketed from 2% of total mortgage loans in 2002 to 30% in 2006. Internal reports at Fannie warned that Fannie was getting in too deep with these risky loans, but top brass ignored the warning as Congressional Democrats led by Frank and Democratic Senator Dodd of Connecticut urged them to buy up more.

The demand for housing mushroomed with all the mortgage loan availability. In 2003 President Bush called Congress to rein in Fannie and Freddie, but Democrats led by Frank said everything was fine and no new regulation was needed. Senate Repubicans pushed legisation in 2004, 2005 and 2006, but again Democrats led by Barney Frank said all was peachy keen and no new regulation was needed. All told, Frank and fellow Democrats blocked reform efforts in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. (In 2005 and 2006 Obama was in the U.S. Senate supporting Democratic efforts to block Fannie/Freddie reform. Obama in just two years became the number two recipient of Fannie/Freddie campaign contributions of all time. They must have known he was present at the creation of the subprime mortgage loan boom that resulted in many millions of bonuses for Fannie/Freddie top officials as business skyrocketed.)

The sorry tale is detailed in, among other places on this site, here. The housing bubble collapsed, subprime mortgage loan defaults exploded and rippled through Fannie and Freddie securities around the world. Financial panic ensued, all triggered by the subprime mortgage mirage dissolving.

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh reported that Barney Frank had appeared on MSNBC to discuss the financial crisis and how it all started. In many interviews, Frank had shamelessly blamed it all on Wall Street greed. Now Frank gave Joe Scarborough a different view. Limbaugh's transcript follows:

RUSH: Barney Frank. I want to go to yesterday's audio sound bite roster. Actually, we have stuff from today and yesterday. Yesterday he was on with Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America, and I'll tell you, Barney is getting more and more contentious with his buddies. I mean, the people in the Drive-By Media are Barney's buddies, and he's getting contentious with them, often for no reason (which means he's defensive). But first from MSNBC today, Joe Scarborough's morning show. Scarborough said, "How do we stop the next big bust on Wall Street? We had the '87 crash. We had the Asian crash. We had the dotcom crash and the telecom crash, and now we got the housing bubble crash." I'll tell you the next crash. I just said, folks. We are insane. It was just two months ago that we learned that massive debt that can't be repaid causes bubbles to burst big time. And now we've got trillion-plus dollar or trillion-dollar deficits, promised by Obama, for years. So that's the next one to bust, and Scarborough is asking Barney Frank, "How do we figure out what the hell we're doing on Wall Street?"

FRANK: It's not deregulation. That was not the problem. It was the failure to adopt new regulation for a new phenomenon, the securitization. The biggest part of this problem was subprime loans: money lent to people to make them homeowners who couldn't afford the loans, who should not have been considered to be, in many cases, capable financially of homeowning. Now... Eh... You've gotta recognize reality. We have begun to adopt legislation to prevent that. We can stop the last problem from recurring. Nobody can know what the next problem will be.

RUSH: This is... (laughing) He created the problem! This... Folks, this is more than chutzpah. He created the problem. This is a sound bite that gets you out of your chair. I don't believe I just heard this. He created it. His definition of "affordable housing" was to make sure that people who couldn't pay the loans back got the loans, the mortgages. He forced Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to do this. ACORN was involved, Obama's group. This was a Democrat Party operation through and through! Instead of answering questions from Joe Scarborough, Barney Frank ought to be answering them as a witness before some other congressional committee. So now we have begun to adopt legislation to prevent this? (laughing) All you can do is laugh. I know some of you people are put out with me because I'm laughing at this, but what are we going to do? You can't go through your life angry all the time like the liberals do, but this...

Trillions of dollars have been lost as a result. Most 401(k)s and other savings have been decimated. Retirements are being postponed. Housing values have shriveled. People have lost their homes. And who was responsible? Know-it-all do-good Democrats who ignored the realities of economics.

What is Obama doing with his grandiose rescue plan for the economy? He is frightening people all over again, stirring the panic that had begun to subside.

He wants the government to dispense now -- urgently -- a trillion dollars as the "last chance" "to save the American economy." He, Obama, can and will do it.

Such government programs didn't end the Great Depression; as studies show (for example, Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man), they actually lengthened it and caused the economy to continue in stagnation. But, politically, it was a master stroke for FDR and his Democratic Party. It kept them in power for years. (By the way, The Forgotten Man was he who ultimately had to pay the bills for all that spending.)

OBAMA'S PLAN IS TO TRANSFORM AMERICA INTO A SOCIALIST SOCIETY DEPENDENT ON THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Community Organizer-in-Chief Obama is following the Marxist Saul Alinsky (Rules for Radicals) playbook to destroy capitalism and replace it with totalitarian socialism, with power in and dependence on the government, which spreads wealth to those it deems deserving taken from those who have earned it.

The fiscal crisis has handed Obama the Alinsky opportunity of a lifetime. Obama can condemn what brought it about (capitalist society) that isn't working for the middle class and assert that only immense government action can save the country. The re-panicked people need to be saved. To mask what he's doing, he talks about the great history of American innovation, initiative and entrepreneurship that one day will be restored. He says individuals will get "tax cuts," but nobody's tax is being cut, it's wealth redistribution. Why, he even rolled out new Doublespeak, referring to himself as a "pragmatic conservative." Do not be misled: His intention is to create a society of dependence on government largesse (of course equally distributed), not enlarging opportunity for all.

And at the top of this totalitarian society is Obama the Benevolent dispensing favors, which suits his narcissist personality (as evidenced repeatedly throughout the campaign, e.g., Greek temple settings, healing the planet, waters receding, words coming from above to tell one and all to vote for Obama, we (that is, I) are the one(s) we have been waiting for).

It is a dangerous time for the American way of life. With Democrats in power in Congress and the White House, replacing equal opportunity with equality of outcome as dictated by the government has never been closer. And the ever enlarging dependent class will deliver dependable votes to those (Democrats) who bestow the favors. We are already dangerously close to having half the adult population paying no income tax at all; how much will they care about taxing earners and producers?

Obama has made it clear (most openly so in a Chicago radio interview) he finds the U.S. Constitution flawed because it only addressed what government couldn't do to the people, not what the government should do for the people. The idea that people should be free to make their life choices is not good enough for Obama. He wants the government to fill their outthrust hands, making sure nobody gets too much. In Obama's view, the government should run the economy, not just regulate it. Does anyone really believe the government can create utopia? How far from Reagan's view can Obama's be -- Reagan who said some of the most dangerous words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

When will his economic advisors finally figure out what he's doing and speak up? Summers and Volcker are not socialist ideologues and surely are not part of the Obama conspiracy. But his Democratc (Chicago) political advisors, who want lasting power, and supporters (such as ACORN) are. And, most importantly, so is his newly appointed Domestic Policy Advisor Chicagoan Cass Sunstein, who already has served Obama by last March explaining away his campaign remarks about "redistributive change," the kind of slip Obama also made with Joe the Plumber.

As Alinsky says, first you have to make your target constituency unhappy and resentful about their current circumstances, then rally them with "hope" and "change" to demand a better deal. Obama paints a bleak picture, calls on Congress for urgent action on massive wealth distribution to the people to cure the disease infecting America. Just listen to him about what omnipotent government can do: The people who have lost their jobs are "counting on us" as are those who have lost their homes. He will save us.

When the debt the government incurs to pay these hundreds of billions (trillions?) comes due, you can be sure that those who have earned and saved and succeeded will be the ones paying for the handouts to those who have not.

For all those successful folks who supported Obama and never paid any attention to his Marxist background (if they even bothered to learn about it), a very rude shock is coming.

The twin desires of Congressional Democrats for never-ending political power and Obama's for a totalitarian socialist state over which he rules are coming together to threaten America's future as a land of opportunity.

The socialist ideologue Obama, lacking any real world experience, plans to put his textbook utopian dreams to work. But there is no utopia.

Who will stop them before severe damage is done?

FOOTNOTE: Coincidentally, the Wall Street Journal carried a wonderfully titled piece "From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years" detailing how Ayn Rand's fictional magnum opus about capitalism's defeat at socialist hands is currently playing out in our bailout and handout hysteria. Stephen Moore summarizes:

[T]he moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

Our housing bubble was blown up to the point of explosion by Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank and his Democratic do-good colleagues promoting mortgage loans to people who could not afford them. Now that the burst bubble has triggered a global crisis of credit confidence, Barney and friends, including the incoming president Obama, are front in center with more good ideas of how government can help.

As for Rand's novel, there were critics but, asMoore recount, the messsage was there:

Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.

It is happening.

The Wall Street Journal reported on a new poll on what voters think of Republicans. Steve Moore for the WSJ reports with our italicized comments interspersed:

The first comprehensive poll on why voters voted the way they did in November has just been released by the communications firm Target Point Consulting. I received a full briefing from the pollster Alex Lundry on what these 1,000 voters think of Republicans. The short answer is: not much.

The GOP is "in great disfavor with the electorate right now. Republicans are blamed for fiscal mismanagement, overspending, and the bad economy," says Mr. Lundry.

Fiscal mismanagement when in office. Absolutely. Overspending. Absolutely. The bad economy. The burden of the party with executive power, the prior "good" economic times forgotten -- and the media never even acknowledged those good times when they were happening. As for the worldwide financial crisis we are experiencing, this was triggered by Democrats and Democratic policies on housing that Republicans unsuccessfully tried to change, but the media didn't report it that way and the fast-talking Democrats were quicker and better at pointing the finger than the Republicans -- a key Republican failing.

"Democrats are seen as a center-right party, while Republicans are seen as dominated by the right." That's a big problem because even though 84% of voters say they are center or right on the ideological spectrum, the 48% in the middle, i.e., independents, are tilting heavily toward Democrats.

This view is so hilariously wrong but nonetheless extremely disturbing. That voters think Democrats are "center-right" seems impossible, considering they nominated the most far-left senator in the party who advocates a "spread the wealth around" policy is astounding and fast-talking liberals like Barney Frank are praising expanded welfare. It shows the skill of Democratic PR aided by the left wing mainstream media. For example, the myth that man is responsible for climate change, a concept embraced by the Democratic Party, and will require actions that will thrust millions into poverty, is deemed reasonable and mainstream by the media. The Republican position that growth of the world economy is paramount and man's impact on climate is either minimal or altogether unproven is deemed by the media as extreme far-right thinking. That such false impressions have developed is proof of Republican ineptness in the age of instant media.

The fairly narrow victory by Barack Obama in the popular vote disguises an "enthusiasm gap" among Democratic and Republican voters. Some 65% of Obama voters "strongly supported" him, whereas only 33% of John McCain voters "strongly supported" the Arizona Republican. This helps explain the river of money for Mr. Obama and the massive grassroots advantage for the Democrats.

This isn't such a big problem for the long run. Voters "wanted" the first black president to show they weren't racist and Obama fanned that feeling skillfully if despicably by unfounded but effective charges of racism against Clinton and McCain. Also, McCain wasn't much of a conservative and left too many in the base sitting on their hands.

Issue by issue, when the issues are clearly understood, the Republican positions are held by a substantial majority. Telling the story well with credible spokesmen is what's needed. The handicap of the left-wing media -- and what Sam Huntington called the "de-nationalized elites" in academia and elsewhere -- is a fact that has to be addressed in all communication plans. For example, when Democrats and the elites belittle traditional American ethics and morality, patriotism and military service, and Republicans allow them to get away with it, they are missing huge opportunities. Republicans have not been forceful enough in standing up for positions that a majority of Americans agree with, fearing the backlash from the leftwing media. For example, the left wing attacks aggressively on the extreme position on gay marriage, crying "bigotry" and "denial of civil rights," and conservative spokesmen cringe instead of issuing forceful rejoinders, even though the majority of people vote for the traditional concept of marriage. But if conservaties allow the one-sided debate to continue as it is, conservative positions will be eroded, to the vast injury of American society. "Anything goes" is not an American value.

But the biggest problem revealed by the poll for Republicans is that "voters no longer believe that the party cares about the middle class in a meaningful or credible way," Mr. Lundry explains. "Democrats cleverly frame every issue as for the middle class."

Most everybody thinks they belong to the middle class. Democrats though are aiming to solidify their voting support among Americans who will be delighted with handouts from the government. The more they can make people dependent on government, the larger their support base. This is the age-old struggle between Marxist equality of outcome vs. equality of opportunity that this nation was built on. Rob Peter to pay Paul. The nation is very close to having more Pauls than Peters, since so many now pay no income tax. Consequently, they have no regard for Peter, who is the middle class person footing the government bills. This is a huge problem and Obama with his pledge to "spread the wealth" will make it worse. He would transform our society into a European-style one, which is already staggering under its unsustainable socialist burdens.

What issues have Republicans hurt themselves most on? Three that jump out are immigration, where Republicans are seen as too strident; the War in Iraq, where voters are eager for closure; and bailouts, where voters have become angry and resentful at throwing money at failing giant corporations. Furthermore, as economic anxieties have escalated, independent voters are now more favorably inclined toward protectionist trade policies. Free marketeers need to make a better case for the positive benefits of international trade or more restrictions are certainly on the way.

The statements here are questionable. Overwhelmingly, Americans disapproved of all the proposed immigration plans, including McCain's and the President's. No sensible conservative proposal entered the debate; conservatives only operated at the margins or, with Tom Tancredo, at the extreme. The borders must be made secure, first and foremost. Any path to citizenship must include English and thorough Americanization and assimilation, so that the kinds of separatism and hostility shown by La Raza and the pro-Mexico rallies in Los Angeles would be disqualifying for citizenship and permanent residency. Legal immigration should be based on what America needs by way of skills rather than on family relations.

As for the economic problems and the bailouts, again it is Republican failure to characterize the situation accurately that allowed the Democrats and the media to blame the Republicans, especially the Bush Administration. Democrats instantly blamed Bush and Wall Street, when it was Democrats like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and, yes, Barack Obama, who brought on the subprime loan failure fiasco that triggered the world financial panic. To this day how many average voters knew of Bush and Senate Republican efforts to reverse Clinton subprime loan policies and rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that were blocked by Democrats led by Frank and Dodd and supported by Senator Obama? As for pinning Wall Street on the Republicans, that's a joke: Obama raised several times more money from Wall Street than McCain did. Republicans are for small business and entrepreneurship, not "Wall Street greed," greed that feeds Democratic coffers very generously. President Bush has often been faulted for not responding forcefully to criticism, fair and unfair, and in that respect he did serve the country and conservatism well. Unfortunately, Congress at this time doesn't have impressive Republican spokesmen to make the case, either.

Democrats and the leftwing media did a disservice to the country by politicizing the Iraq war. However, it will fade as any kind of positive issue for the Democrats and should emerge as a success that Republicans can take credit for - a tyrant and his threat to his neighbors and America removed, a democratic country functioning in the Middle East assisting in the war against violent Islam and, soon, substantially more oil in the world supply. A more aggressive response by the White House to the avalanche of Democratic criticism would have helped.

The good news is that voters are very fearful that Democrats will go too far with their liberal agenda. When voters are asked what they "like least about the Democrats," the most common answers volunteered were: "taxes going up," "big government," "liberal," "raise spending," and even "socialism." These broad economic and fiscal principles appear to present the GOP with its biggest opening.

Again, these Democratic positions will not become the albatrosses they should be unless Republicans are forceful and aggressive. They must find their voices and their spokesmen. Also, the damage that the global warning myth and the economically disastrous Democratic plans to counter it will do to the average citizen must be aggressivley exposed and discredited. This is a major issue to get on the side of the middle class against the environmental elites who own the Democratic Party.

The poll also reveals that Republicans can win back voters by opposing Democrats on several specific policies coming down the pike in 2009: card-check labor union elections, bailouts for banks and auto makers, welfare expansions and affirmative action.

Denying workers the vote in union elections is outrageous. Bailing out the auto unions, which is what will happen, is outrageous. Explaining why getting a hand up instead of a handout is better for the individual, the family and America is a challenge but must be done. As for affirmative action, the voters have just elected the first affirmative action president, so, who knows how big an issue that will be.

The key for the months ahead is for Republicans to posture themselves, advises Mr. Lundry, "not as obstructionists, but as a check on the Obama agenda."

Too many are being lulled by Obama's excellent appointment for defense and economics into thinking he will go mainstream. He will show his extremist side very soon: His pro-abortion agenda is breathtaking in its scope. He intends to expand abortion far beyond Roe v. Wade. Even some of his backers are arguing that infanticide is just an extension of abortion. His "spread the wealth" plan has the potential to expand the handout class into a majority for the Democratic Party. There are many, including minorities, particularly Hispanics, who may rebel against his cultural policies who can be captured for the conservative cause. Obama says he wants to transform America and what he is proposing, based on his Marxist socialist background and associations and his support for abortion without limits, is an ugly America.

Massachusetts sends an all-Democratic team to Congress and they are powerful. Some even revel in their power. As in 2008.

For example, Cape Cod's own Congressman Willam Delahunt took pleasure in outing a government security official so al-Qaeda could get a good look at him. We can be sure his family didn't enjoy the Congressman's joke. He earned a place in our Hall of Shame.

Then there is the powerful and shameless rolled into one. Congressman Barney Frank did more than any other U.S. public official in bringing about the worldwide financial crisis. He was among those who pressed the Clinton Administration to loosen up mortgage lending standards so that mortgage lenders would be required to make loans to uncreditworthy borrowers. Then, to give nervous banks and other mortgage lenders somewhere to offload those risky loans, he (along with Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut) badgered the Democrats running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the latter run by another Massachusetts boy) to buy those risky loans, package them up and sell them around the world as securities backed by the U.S. government. A concerned Bush Administration and Senate Republicans tried to bring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under control, but Barney Frank was there, 2003-2006, blocking those efforts, saying everything was fine and no changes were neeeded. When the subprime mortgage defaults started and exploded into an unraveling of the world financial system, there was Barney Frank blaming Wall Street. Shameless.

Chicago Democrats are also powerful, but their speciality is racial politics, payoffs and corruption. The Chicago Democratic machine put its candidate for president forward, hid his problematic past with a fictionalized biography, counted (correctly) on reverse racism to elect him and raised hundreds of millions of dollars illegally online to propel him into the White House. All of those unsavory buddies, Wright, Pfleger, Rezko, Ayers, Dohrn, Khalidi, Farrakhan, were shoved offstage with the media's acquiesence. Then the Mayor Daley spinmaster and Obama campaign orchestrator David Axelrod and Chicago Congressman and Obama's choice for White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel thought Democratic governor Blagojevich should name an Obama pick to Obama's Senate seat, all of which has now blown up into the "Senate Seat for Sale" scandal caught on tape by federal agents. The Chicago Three will now run the country from the White House, no doubt drawing on all the expertise accumulated by the Chicago Democratic machine over decades.

The biggest story of 2008 really was the turnaround in Iraq, which, as soon as it became obvious it was to be a success, disappeared from media top news. Replacing a terrrorist-supporting tyrant in the Middle East with a democratically-elected government that is an ally in the war against violent Islam is a tremendous accomplishment for which President Bush and General Petraeus will not get credit from the Democrats who opposed and ridiculed them. Or from their collaborating media.

Victor Davis Hanson reviews the year (but without the Massachusetts side notes) and calls it "A Year Like None Other." He sees three decades rolled into 2008, the Roaring 20s, the "bleak" 1930s and the Sixties. See if you agree.

The fiscal crisis will be on everyone's minds for quite awhile.

The world financial network hangs together because of confidence.

What shattered that confidence was the bursting of the housing bubble and the defaults beginning with the subprime loans encouraged, indeed, required by Democrats in Congress led by the likes of Massachusetts' own Congressman Barney Frank. Frank and other Democrats also twisted arms at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy the risky loans and package them up and send them around the world with the implicit U.S. guaranty behind them. Frank, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives on financial matters, kept telling concerned Republicans that Fannie and Freddie were in great condition and that no reform or new regulation was needed. Frank convinced fellow Democrats in the Senate this was the case and together they blocked reform legislation in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006.

What percent of Massachusetts -- and U.S. -- residents know that Democratic policies and actions cost them 30-50% of their life savings?

"Who blew that hole in your IRA?" Barney Frank. But he wasn't alone.

Of course, the voluble Frank is on the airwaves regularly blaming everyone else but himself and his colleagues, The Democrats in Congress worked hard to get their constituents who couldn't afford homes to get "subprime" (that is, very risky) mortgage loans. They got the loans all right, they got their homes, but when the housing bubble burst their mortgage defaults caused them agony and in many cases the loss of their homes.

The collapse of the subprime market triggered the financial panic that has cost the world trillions and frozen the credit system, leading to job as well as financial losses.
Democrats are now once again hard at work, this time figuring out how much of taxpayers' money will be poured into the black hole they created in the hope they will avert the Depression that their good intentions and bad judgment has hurtling towards us

After all, as Frank says, there are plenty of rich people out there to tax.

The whole sorry tale of Democratic responsibility is still being written, but a good start would be here and here.

Victor Davis Hanson is on a roll. He had a few things he wanted to get off his chest and he did. Good food for thought.

Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts

By Victor Davis Hanson
November 24, 2008

1. Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the 'role model' diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles's Antigone in Greek or Thucydides' dialogue at Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies--indeed, anything "studies"-- were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.

2. Hollywood is going the way of Detroit. The actors are programmed and pretty rather than interesting looking and unique. They, of course, are overpaid (they do to films what Lehman Brothers' execs did to stocks), mediocre, and politicized. The producers and directors are rarely talented, mostly unoriginal--and likewise politicized. A pack-mentality rules. Do one movie on a comic superhero--and suddenly we get ten, all worse than the first. One noble lion cartoon movie earns us eagle, penguin and most of Noah's Arc sequels. Now see poorer remakes of movies that were never good to begin with. I doubt we will ever see again a Western like Shane, the Searchers, High Noon, or the Wild Bunch. If one wishes to see a fine film, they are now usually foreign, such as Das Boot or Breaker Morant. Watching any recent war movie (e.g., Iraq as the Rape of Nanking) is as if someone put uniforms on student protestors and told them to consult their professors for the impromptu script.

On this Thanksgiving Day In the midst of a financial crisis and watching on television the horrors of Islamic supremacism playing out in Mumbai, there is still much to be thankful for.

Simple acts of kindness, such as the one featured on our website, are characteristic of Americans, where more charity springs from the acts of individuals and private organizations than from the government. That’s the way it should be. Government has essential functions, such as national security. What citizens can do for themselves and others the government shouldn’t do. The more reliant people become on government rather than themselves, history shows bad things happen. The Great Society of Lyndon Johnson, well-intentioned though it was, resulted in the breakdown of black family culture and individual responsibility.

Deepak Chopra, the Indian-born guru, has the answer to the Islamic threat, speaking to Larry King Thanksgiving Eve:

You know, there's 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. That's 25 percent of the population of the world. It's the fastest-growing religion in the world. We cannot, if we do not appease and actually recruit the help of this Muslim world, we're going to have a problem on our hands.

Appeasement always works, of course. Chopra overstates the size of the Muslim population somewhat (1.3 billion is the best guess). More important to understand is that Islam is principally a political ideology bent on world domination and those who have signed on to that cause are growing in number each year due to the spread of Koranic education financed worldwide by Saudi Arabia. Muslims as never before are learning exactly what the Koran says and Mohammad commanded – unrelenting war against non-Muslims till Islam rules the world. Islam needs a reformation, but there is no institution or device to make this happen, since Islam officially has no clerics, no hierarchy. Also, since the Koran is held by Muslim scholars to be the immutable word of God, there is no good way to “interpret” the Koran differently from the way it has been interpreted over the last 1400 years. Rather than adapting Islam to modern times, Islam is returning to the literal reading of the Koran and Mohammad’s words.

Our Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, one of the key architects of the subprime housing bubble and its collapse that brought on the worldwide credit crisis, is wrong again, calling for a 25% cut in defense spending at a time of unprecedented danger. Muslim pirates are threatening the world’s supply of oil, India’s largest city is paralyzed by Islamic terrorism, Iran is developing nuclear weapons, Russia is making threatening noises and China is rapidly building its military might. New rumors swirl about a possible Islamic terrorist attack in New York City over the holidays. Cut defense?

The president-elect is now getting the same briefings as the President on Russia, Iran and Islamic piratical and terrorist attacks and threats, so it can be hoped reality will temper such dangerous Democratic rhetoric.

Here's to many Happy Thanksgivings ahead.

One conservative writer who feared Obama as a danger to America long before the election now delivers his post-election views. As he says, I thought I was right then and I feel the same way now. He has 20 points to make. He prays he will be wrong, as we all do. But we must be alert to the signs he will do the damage we feared.

November 13, 2008, 5:00 a.m.

Bitterfest ’08
By Jay Nordlinger
National Review

My reaction to last week’s election is one of the least important things in the world. But some readers have asked for it, so I thought I’d scribble a lil’ column. I’m hesitant, though, for two reasons.

First, I wrote about the election for months and even years. I particularly wrote about the consequences — bad — of an Obama victory. What am I supposed to do now? Say, “Just kidding”? “It won’t be as bad as all that”? “Never mind”? I’m afraid I can’t be as blasé, or chipper, as some other conservatives. I have an anxious feeling, and long have.

Which leads me to Reason No. 2 for being hesitant — for hesitating to talk: One comes off as Sore-Loserman. And now’s the time for graciousness, optimism, and all that jazz.

Well, enough prefatory typing — I will offer 20 quick points. I am bad to indulge in a bitterfest. But here I go:

1) Have the oceans shrunk to puddles? Have people stopped being sick? Or does that come after Inauguration Day?

2) Seriously, I’m afraid that the Middle East will rock — that Obama will withdraw from Iraq before the country is secured, creating havoc. He promised as much, didn’t he? (I mean the withdrawal, not the havoc.) In April ’75, the United States cut off South Vietnam, resulting in a Communist victory and what we would call today a “humanitarian disaster.” If we abandon the Iraqis to the wolves, will anyone care? (Outside of Iraq, that is.) And what about the Middle East at large?

I quote our ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, who told a group of us last month,

Iraq is really, really important. How things go here will transform the region and America’s role in the region, one way or the other. If Iraq is successful in establishing itself as a democracy, where the rule of law is paramount, that will be something remarkable . . . People are tired of Iraq. They say, “Let’s get it over and done with. We don’t want to watch the Iraq movie anymore.” But the Iraq movie will go on for many more reels, with or without us. And it will have a big effect on us, whether we like it or not.

Right.

And then there’s the matter of whether Iran will acquire nuclear weapons . . .

3) President-elect Obama and his supporters want America to be liked: by Le Monde, the Quai d’Orsay, Der Spiegel — you get the idea. But America can’t necessarily be liked by those elements and stand up for its interests. When the going gets tough, which will Obama choose — Le Monde or American interests? Won’t they ever collide? Don’t they usually?

4) I worry that the Obama years, like the Carter years, will be a field day of adventurism for the worst regimes. Some presidents are willing to stand up to bullies; some presidents are not. And we should all know what weakness invites: aggression.

5) How does Obama regard the War on Terror? Does he think we’re in something worthy of that name — another cold war, a “twilight struggle,” in the words of JFK? Or does he think that dealing with jihadists is just a matter of a little law enforcement, and intelligence-gathering, and police work? Recall the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. We took ’em to court. (One of the perpetrators skedaddled off to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but suggest that there was a connection between Iraq and terror, and you’re dismissed as a boob.)

6) At home, do Americans want to be something like a European social democracy — or is the old American republic still viable? What about abroad? Sarah Palin put the question in terms of “American exceptionalism”: Do we want it or not? And I like to borrow the words of the first Bush, spoken in 1988, when American “decline” was in fashion, and happily anticipated: Are we to be a “unique nation with a special role in the world”? Or are we to be “another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe”?

7) As a rule, I say that people in a democracy get what they deserve. Sometimes minorities don’t deserve what ensues, but such is life. I’m not so sure about the 2008 election. Why? Because the Barack Obama of the general election was so very, very different from the Barack Obama of the Democratic primaries and before. All candidates shift — that’s politics. But Obama, it seems to me, abused the privilege. And he was very good at it.

He campaigned — certainly debated — as a moderate. Not just a moderate Democrat, but practically a moderate Republican. Even citing Richard Lugar! (“Nixon’s favorite mayor,” long ago.) In one of the debates, Obama said he was for missile defense! And he said that America was the greatest nation in the history of man.

Why did Obama’s friends at Columbia and Harvard and so on stand for it? Why did Bill Ayers stand for it? Well, they were holding their noses, of course, knowing that these words were just campaign grist — something for the yokels to ingest.

In brief, I’m not sure that Americans knew what they were voting for.

8) Those interested in stopping or curbing abortion have to be disappointed. The courts will be Obama-oriented for how many years?

9) Amazing — just amazing — that the Republican party took the rap for the financial meltdown. Consider Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Consider Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd. They came out of this smelling like a rose. And GOP-ers — who never wanted the social-financial shakedown that Fannie and Freddie represented — come out the bums. As I said, amazing.

10) John McCain ran a poor campaign. I’m not sure he was capable of better. I do think Obama was beatable — he has been lucky in his opposition. He has been lucky both in Illinois and on the national level. The conventional argument is that McCain was the best possible Republican nominee, even the only possible Republican nominee with a chance of winning. I don’t believe that, for a second. There was a case to be made against Obama, and for McCain: and McCain was poor at both.

11) They say that he conducted an exceptionally mean campaign — I don’t see it. Take the case (the easy case, granted) of Jeremiah Wright. This was Obama’s pastor and “spiritual mentor”: a man who preaches that the AIDS virus was concocted in a government laboratory for the purpose of harming dark-skinned people. And this cost Obama not a thing.

Imagine if Sarah Palin’s preacher disseminated a similar doctrine — a similar lie. She would not be able to participate in public life, would she?

12) I’m sorry, but the treatment of Bush — the demonization of Bush — is appalling. Absolutely appalling. And it says something rotten about our political culture. Think for a second about Katrina — the hurricane. I have no doubt that the federal government made mistakes, and no doubt that Bush fumbled the PR aspect. But this was a huge natural disaster — and people acted as though Bush had caused it.

Crazy, crazy. Even some of my fellow conservatives have bought into the Katrina myth. I wish Bush would do more to defend himself, but he apparently thinks it’s not worth the bother. And don’t get me started on the treatment of Governor Palin after she debuted in Dayton . . .

13) In a way, it’s amazing that conservatives ever win. Conservatives will tell you the following: The Left controls education, K through graduate school. (Maybe pre-K through graduate school — I don’t know.) They control the movies, popular television, the mainstream media, etc., etc. And then conservatives get surprised, often, when liberals triumph at the polls. Well, when all the shaping institutions shape one way . . .

14) I learned something in this election — maybe you learned the same thing about yourself. I learned that I’m a knuckle-dragging moron, because I admire Governor Palin. Used to be, people considered me rather sophisticated — what with the languages, the larnin’, the music, and all. Vincent Persichetti wrote me about a piece of mine when I was eleven, I think! But come to find out, in the fall of 2008, I’m just a drooling hayseed. Funny old world.

15) There may be some positive outcomes to Obama’s election victory. It could be, now, that the Left will help us in the War on Terror. Some people said, for years, that they would never be onboard until they were in charge. Until now, they have done everything possible to thwart Bush. The New York Times delights in exposing clandestine programs, designed to keep the innocent safe. Will all that end now?

Also, maybe the Left will feel better about the country itself. Some of my neighbors (Manhattan) have gloated with me about November 4. And I’ve said, “Yes, America is a good country, isn’t it? Good constitution, good system, don’t you agree?” That leaves them a little nonplussed or annoyed.

And then there is race — about which I have written as much as I have any subject in my journalism career. (For a biggish piece on race and the ’08 election, go here.) I don’t believe that a presidential election was necessary to validate racial progress. But other people do. And it will be an even better day when skin is not an issue: when what matters is what a person thinks, and what a person is.

Besides which, if Obama fails, making bad or even disastrous decisions, will that reflect badly on black Americans as a whole? Of course not: It will reflect badly on Obama, and possibly Joe Biden, and others. (Incidentally, Biden was wrong on everything having to do with the Cold War. He fought everything that worked, tooth and nail. Will lights finally go off in his brain now?)

16) Let’s talk about Obama’s press coverage: During the campaign, he was practically immune from criticism. His coverage was almost 100 percent positive. Will President Obama be immune from criticism — or will he be treated normally? I have a feeling that the “MSM” will be so eager for him to succeed, they will treat politics as though the campaign were still on: with D’s in white hats and R’s in black hats.

17) I had a bitter thought (surprise!) after Obama’s little shot at Nancy Reagan — the one he took the day after the election, or whenever it was. You know, in the fall campaign, everyone kept telling us about Obama’s “first-class temperament.” If nothing else, the tall, collected senator had a “first-class temperament.”

Oh, really? Say what you will about Palin’s familiarity with Frantz Fanon, at least she’s not a jerk.

18) It seems to me that, after the election — after their electoral loss — Republicans and conservatives were gracious, dignified, and public-minded. Classy, even. Of course, we could have expected nothing less had Republicans won and Democrats lost . . .

19) Just possibly, the assumption of the office will concentrate Obama’s mind — will sober him up, where foreign policy and the world are concerned. He will get the same threat assessments that President Bush does, every morning. He will have to figure out how to keep the country safe. There’s a famous, somewhat annoying old saying: You may not like war, but war likes you — it has a way of finding you.

Another cliché says that we have to fight them there or fight them here. I hope that President Obama chooses, as President Bush has, to fight them there.

Furthermore, there has not been an attack like 9/11 in seven years — something most people thought was impossible. I have a suspicion that Bush and his people are doing something right. Will Obama and his people continue that something right?

20) Finally, I said, for many months, that an Obama presidency would be harmful — harmful to the country, but perhaps even more to the world, which counts so heavily on American leadership. I hope very much that I’m wrong. I have been before, believe it or not!

All right, end of bitterfest. (Twenty points wasn’t all that many, was it?)

The Wall Street Journal interviews Obama's chief- of-staff-to-be Rahm Emanuel and seems to believe what he says, which is total nonsense and intended to mislead.

Obama is not pragmatic as Emanuel says; he's ideological. He has his agenda, which is totalitarian and socialist, and he plans to ram it through. His attitude towards elimination of life shows that. With all of the problems he will face as a new president, it is ghoulish that Emanuel says Obama wants one of his first acts to be pushing through federal funding of embryonic stem cell research that will result in the killing of untold numbers of human beings.

Why this fixation on abortion, which is what is involved in creating embryonic stem cells to kill them?

Obama in his campaign pledged to Planned Parenthood he wanted his first act as president to be the elimination of all restrictions on abortion, including partial birth abortion, making taxpayers who don't support abortion to pay for it and forcing hospital and doctors who for reasons of conscience or religious belief to perform abortions.

While he says he want to see abortion numbers reduced, he favors eliminating funding for pregnancy crisis centers, which help pregnant young women make informed choices rather than assuming abortion is their only choice. His policy, if adopted, will lead to an explosive increase in abortions. Why this priority?

Obama told his significant supporter Planned Parenthood, which makes hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the abortion business, that he would do whatever he could in effect to build their business. Planned Parenthood wants more abortions, not fewer, and more revenues as a result.

Obama's callousness is breathtaking. Emanuel's prediction that Obama will lead off with federal funding of embryonic stem cell research shows where Obama's headed. No medical advances have been attributed to use of embryonic stem cells and none are expected for many years. Recent research has indicated that using stem cells other than embryonic stem cells is just as if not more promising and does not involve killing humans. Therefore, creating and killing human embryos is needless. Nonetheless, Obama ignores these scientific results and appears to be using the embryonic stem cell debate to condition the public to supporting unlimited abortion to the last day of gestation.

Why is he so fixated on eliminating all of the safeguards that states and the federal government have built up over 30 years to reduce the killing of human beings?

Emanuel was picked as chief of staff because he, like Obama, is a member in good standing in the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine that has elected Obama to every office he has sought, including the presidency, and has the same ruthless, moral relativist attitudes (no right or wrong; no truth, just whatever works) as Obama and his mentor Saul Alinsky. The understand each other and can work together.

Obama cut his communist Alinsky community organizer teeth working with and then training ACORN operatives in bullying bankers and registering voters. Just a few years later Emanuel himself became indoctrinated in the Alinsky methods during a tour of his own with ACORN.

Congress opened up for Emanuel when convicted felon Chicago pol Dan Rostenkowski went to prison for stealing from the federal government and the Chicago Daley machine anointed him to take the Rostenkowski seat (2002), just as the Daley machine had done for Obama for Illinois state senate (1996) and U.S. Senate (2004).

It's all about power; whatever it takes.

Obama is ideologically driven to make rich America pay for the the wrongs he perceives they visited upon the non-whites of America and the world. The first of the one-two punch is the "tax cut" bill that will take money from the productive who pay taxes and give it to those who don't pay any income tax. The second will be reinstituting the federal estate tax and raising taxes on dividends and capital gains, which actionss will represent a huge tax increase for everyone. When a questioner asked why raise the capital gains tax, because every study has shown doing so decreased government tax revenue, Obama replied, well, it's the fair thing to do. Even though the federal government will lose money by doing so. Therefore, it is more important to punish the productive and the savers than gain revenue for the federal government. What Obama thinks is fair is the test.

It is natural enough for Emanuel to deny Obama has an ideological agenda, because that might frighten voters. Alinsky taught to pursue the radical agenda incrementally, so as to not to alarm and awaken opposition. Obama starts with embryonic cell funding, since most people don't understand the issue and don't know about better alternatives.

Obama will speak calmly and soothingly and so will Emanuel when it is called for.

When more than half the population is getting handouts and paying no taxes, a tipping point will have been reached. On current trend, hastened along by the Obama "tax cut" program to take money from taxpayers and give it to those who don't pay income taxes, that point will be reached by 2012 with a majority getting federal welfare. (That's assuming that today's slim majority of taxpayers will not be able to keep Congress from rubberstamping Obama's welfare plan.)

Mark Steyn sees the U.S. inexorably slipping down the European unsustainable welfare black hole.

The Death of the American Idea

An electorate living high off the entitlement hog.

By Mark Steyn

‘Give me liberty or give me death!”

“Live free or die!”

What's that? Oh, don't mind me. I'm just trying out slogans for the 2012 campaign and seeing which one would get the biggest laughs.

Democratic policies promoting mortgage loans to those who couldn't afford them created the housing boom and bubble and its collapse that was at the heart of the worldwide financial panic that has cost American savers hundreds of billions of dollars of losses in their life savings. There was a chance to head off disaster in 2005 and 2006 but Democrats in the Senate led by Harry Reid and supported by Barack Obama and other Senate Democrats blocked the Republican bill to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. House Democrats led by Pelosi and Barney Frank backed them up. The Democrats who pushed such policies deserve to be rejected. They sought to "spread the wealth" and instead impoverished tens of millions.

However, the most important decision on November 4th is electing our Commander-in-chief.

These are dangerous times, it is a dangerous world. Many don't want to think about it, but Islamic radicals are waging a world war against Western Civilzation targeting first and foremost the United States. Battlefronts are in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Lebanon, Israel, Nigeria, across all of Western Europe and in the United States, Canada and Australia. In some places it's active warfare, in others, terrorism, in others, subversion of our values and way of life to replace them with Islamic law. And Russia and China are building military strength while Iran seeks nuclear warheads for its long-range missiles.

Only John McCain is qualified and fit for the job of Commander-in-Chief. 69% of our military polled agree. McCain loves America and will do his utmost to protect it. Obama finds it difficult to say a good word about America. He constantly disparages America, it's bad and it needs to be changed.

Not only is Obama unqualified, he denies the importance of these threats, has pledged to slash our military to help fund new welfare programs and seems to believe appeasement and a weakened military will bring us peace in our time, just as Neville Chamberlain did in 1939. What prize would he offer up to Iran as Chamberlain offered (and gave) the Sudetenland to Hitler? No wonder Israelis polled prefer McCain by a wide margin.

Synidcated columnist to the world Mark Steyn says things so much better than almost everyone else. This Saturday's observations on Barack Obama echo remarks which have previously been posted on this website, but they are so well stated it is worth reading every word.

He is so accurate in describing the vast majority of support for Obama -- "Woudn't it be nice if...." with no real understanding of or concern about who the man is. It's just assumed he's a "normal" or "average" Democratic politcian when he's anything but.

The conservatives who have jumped over to Obama swayed by his rhetorical skills, all of them, without exception, are assuming his extremist past, his extremist close allies and friends and extremist votes mean nothing and he will morph into a pragmatic, sensible, middle-of-the road sort of fellow. Steyn advises, "Don't bet on it."

Remember the movie "Bad News Bears"? The coach gave sage advice to his new team at the start of the season:

The coach (Walter Matthau) points out the folly of assumptions. He writes “ASSUME” on the chalkboard, then adds slashes “ASS/U/ME” while saying, “When you ASSUME—it could make an ASS out of U and ME!”

Get ready. Reality will come crashing in if Obama is elected.

Obama in 2-D Remember: We’re not electing a symbol, a logo, a two-dimensional image.

By Mark Steyn
Novemberf 1, 2008

In Tokyo last week, over a thousand people signed a new petition asking the Japanese government to permit marriages between human beings and cartoon characters. “I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” explained Taichi Takashita. “Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorize marriage with a two-dimensional character?”

Get back to me on that Tuesday night. We’ll know by then whether an entire constitutional republic has decided to contract marriage with a two-dimensional character and to attempt to take up residence in the two-dimensional world. For many of his supporters, Barack Obama is an idea. He offers “hope, not fear”. “Hope” of what? “Hope” of “change.” Okay, but “change” to what? Ah, well, there you go again, getting all hung up on three-dimensional reality, when we’ve moved way beyond that. I don’t know which cartoon character Taichi Takashita is eyeing as his betrothed, but up in the sky Obamaman is flying high, fighting for Hope, Change, and a kind of Post-Modern American Way.

The two-dimensional idea of President Obama is seductive: To elect a young black man of Kenyan extraction and Indonesian upbringing offers redemption both for America’s original sin (slavery) and for the more recent perceived sins of President Bush — his supposed enthusiasm for sticking it to foreigners generally, and the Muslim world in particular. And no, I’m not saying he’s Muslim. It’s worse than that: He’s a pasty-faced European — at least in his view of state power, welfare, and taxation.

But, in a sense, he’s not anything in particular, so much as everything in general. The media dispatched legions of reporters to hoot and jeer at Sarah Palin’s Wasilla without ever wondering: Where would we go to do this to Obama? Where’s his “home town?” Bill Clinton was famously (if not entirely accurately) from “a place called Hope.” Barack Obama is from an idea called hope. What’s the area code? 1-800-HOPE4CHANGE. The 1-800 candidate offers the hope of electing a younger Morgan Freeman, the cool, reserved, dignified black man who, when he’s not literally God walking among us (as in Bruce Almighty), is always the conscience of the movie.

You can understand the appeal of such an idea. Even if you’re not hung up on white liberal guilt or Bush loathing, there’s an urge to get it over with, to say, well, America should have a black president, and the sooner the better — ie, the sooner we do it, the better it speaks of us. They have a point. I look at the roll call of the dead on 9/11: Arestegui, Bolourchi, Carstanjen, Droz, Elseth, Foti, Gronlund, Hannafin, Iskyan, Kuge, Laychak, Mojica, Nguyen, Ong, Pappalardo, Quigley, Retic, Shuyin, Tarrou, Vamsikrishna, Warchola, Yuguang, Zarba. Black, white, Scandinavian, Balkan, Arab, Asian — in a word, American. The presidential pantheon has a narrower ring: Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Johnson. Obama has a tedious shtick about how his name sounds odd and he doesn’t look like “all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” He’s not just picking out the drapes for the Oval Office, he’s ordering up the new currency and booking the sculptors for Mount Rushmore.

And why not? Obama in the White House, Obama on the dollar bill, Obama on Rushmore would symbolize the possibilities of America more than that narrow list of white-bread protestant presidents to date.

The problem is we’re not electing a symbol, a logo, a two-dimensional image. Long before he emerged on the national stage as Barack the Hope-Giver and Bringer of Change, there was a three-dimensional Barack Obama, a real man who lives in the real world. And that’s where the problem lies.

The Senator and his doting Obots in the media have gone to great lengths to obscure what Barack Obama does when he’s not being a symbol: his voting record, his friends, his patrons, his life outside the soft-focus memoirs is deemed non-relevant to the general hopey-changey vibe. But occasionally we get a glimpse. The offhand aside to Joe the Plumber about “spreading the wealth around” was revealing because it suggests a crude redistributive view of “social justice.” Yet the nimble Hope-a-Dope sidestepper brushed it aside, telling a crowd in Raleigh that next John McCain will be “accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

But that too is revealing. As John Hood pointed out at National Review, communism is not “sharing.” In a free society, the citizen chooses whether to share his Lego, trade it for some Thomas the Tank Engine train tracks, or keep it to himself. From that freedom of action grow mighty Playmobile cities. Communism is compulsion. It’s the government confiscating your Elmo to “share” it with someone of its choice. Joe the Plumber is free to spread his own wealth around — hiring employees, buying supplies from local businesses, enjoying surf’n’turf night at his favorite eatery. But, in Obama’s world view, that’s not good enough: the state is the best judge of how to spread Joe the Plumber’s wealth around.

The Senator is a wealthy man, mainly on the strength of two bestselling books offering his biography in lieu of policy and accomplishments. Many lively members of his Kenyan family occur as supporting characters in his story and provide the vivid color in it. But they too are not merely two-dimensional cartoons. His Aunt Zeituni, a memorable figure in Obama’s writing, turned up for real last week, when the dogged James Bone of the London Times tracked her down. She lives in a rundown housing project in Boston.

In his Wednesday-night infomercial, Obama declared that his “fundamental belief” was that “I am my brother’s keeper.” Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother’s keeper, why couldn’t he send him a ten-dollar bill and near double the guy’s income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother’s keeper, and his aunt’s keeper. Why be surprised by that? For 20 years in Illinois, Obama has marinated in the swamps of the Chicago political machine and the campus radicalism of William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. In such a world, the redistributive urge is more or less a minimum entry qualification.

The government as wealth-spreader-in-chief was not a slip of the tongue but consistent with Obama’s life, friends and votes. The Obamacons — that’s to say, conservatives hot for Barack- - justify their decision to support a big-spending big-government Democrat with the most liberal voting record in the Senate by “hoping” that he doesn’t mean it, by “hoping” that he’ll “change” in office. “I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible,” declared reformed conservative Ken Adelman, “than his liberal record indicates.”

He’s “hoping” that Obama will buck not just Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and the rest of the gang but also his voting record, his personal address book, and his entire adult life. Good luck betting the future on that. The “change” we’ll get isn’t hard to discern: An expansion of government, an increase in taxes, a greater annexation of the dynamic part of the economy by the sclerotic bureaucracy, a reduction in economic liberty . . . oh, and a lot more Chicago machine politics.

On Tuesday many Americans will vote for the two-dimensional Obama — the image, the idea, the “hope”. But it will be the three-dimensional Obama — the real man with the real record — that America will have to live with.

The media is now joining Obama is playing the race card. And here. Simply put, if you don't vote for Obama, you're racist. You have no legitimate reason not to.

1. That you're troubled by the elite media's attempt to force you to vote for Obama to prove you're not a racist, is no reason.

2. That you're troubled by Obama’s constant playing of the race card, first against Hillary Clinton, then against John McCain and now against anyone who raises a question or a criticism, is no reason.

3. That you're troubled by his fixation on black power and dislike of whites as revealed in his own books in which he approvingly refers to "white men's greed" as the cause of the world's problems, is no reason.

4. That you're troubled by his attraction to Marxist socialist principles that began in high school and continued through college where he “hung out” with black power advocates and Marxist socialists and distanced himself from whites, as he describes in his books, is no reason.

5. That you’re troubled that he put his Marxist socialist principles into practice by becoming a community organizer of blacks against the white establishment in Chicago working with communist/socialist ACORN and other community organizers, is no reason.

6. That you're troubled by his attraction to and absorption of the communist Alinsky method of community organizing (studied in Chicago and while at Harvard Law School) in which socialist purposes are carefully hidden by sticking to platitudes like "hope" and "change" to solve every human dissatisfaction, is no reason.

7. That you're troubled by his telling Joe the Plumber he was going to impose higher taxes on him to "spread the wealth," that is, to take money away from people who pay taxes to give to people who don't pay taxes, which is pure socialism, is no reason

8. That you're troubled by his long association (as trainer, lawyer, collaborator and employer) with the communist/socialist community organization ACORN that has been involved in vote registration fraud controversies, including convictions, across the country, including this year, is no reason.

9. That you're troubled that Obama hired ACORN this year to do voter registration, knowing as he did about its record of voter fraud registration accusations, investigations and convictions (investigations of ACORN fraud are under way right now in at least 12 states), paying $320,000 to ACORN and then covering up the payment, is no reason.

10, That you're troubled that every day there are new stories of fraud involving ACORN workers in states across the nation and all the Obama campaign can say is that such reports are "a distraction" from the real issues, is no reason.

11. That you're troubled that he was an early pioneer, working with ACORN, in showing how to intimidate banks and bankers into making uncreditworthy mortgage loans to minorities and low-income people who could not afford them, which pressure tactics spread and ultimately led to the housing bubble, its collapse and the present world financial crisis and loss of hundreds of billions for investors and tens of thousands of jobs, is no reason.

12. That you're troubled that Obama, having worked closely with the communist/socialist organization ACORN throughout his entire career, recently said his views are still pretty much the same as when he helped ACORN force banks to make risky mortgage loans they never should have made and ran a voter registration drive with ACORN, is no reason.

13. That you're troubled that Obama has vowed to the communist//socialist group ACORN and other such organizations will be called in to work with him, if he's elected president, even before inauguration to shape the agenda of his administration,, is no reason.

14. That you're troubled that in just a few months in the U.S. Senate Obama was able to become the second biggest recipient, some $126,000 -- over a 20-year period -- of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sources, is no reason.

15. That you’re troubled that when John McCain and others were proposing reforms in 2005 and 2006 to prevent a collapse of the out-of-control practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying up far too many risky subprime mortgage loans, Obama instead sided with Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd in opposing reform, thus bringing on the present world financial crisis, indeed being quoted saying subprime loans were a good thing, is no reason.

16. That you're troubled by his association with people who hate America such as white hater Jeremiah Wright, unrepentant admitted terrorist bomber and self-described communist William Ayers (who said in 2001 the mention of America "makes him want to puke"), Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan, former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi and nutcase Father Michael Pfleger, is no reason.

17. That you're troubled that he was attracted in the first place to black power, white-America hater, anti-Semitic pastor Jeremiah Wright and stayed with him for 20 years, knowing he was a follower of black liberation theology that preaches that any god that is not exclusively on the side of the blacks against whites must be killed, is no reason.

18. That you're troubled that he lied about never in 20 years hearing Jeremiah Wright make any of his anti-America and anti-white speeches, but then admitted he had when his campaign advisors realized the lie could be easily disproved, is no reason.

19. That you're troubled that he brought his young children to Jeremiah Wright's sermons Sunday after Sunday to listen to his bigoted tirades against whites and his hateful harangues against America, is no reason.

20. That you’re troubled that he helped Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan organize the Million-Man March in Washington and that Farrakhan has called Obama the messiah for black Muslims, is no reason.

21. That you're troubled that, working for years jointly with unrepentant terrorist bomber William Ayers, who describes himself as a communist, Obama funneled $150 million to fund programs to turn Chicago teachers and students into socialist revolutionaries who hate America, is no reason.

22. That you're troubled that, working jointly with America hater William Ayers, Obama directed charitable funds to separatist Afrocentric, America-hating programs designed by allies of Jeremiah Wright, while denouncing “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” is no reason.

23. That you're troubled that, working jointly with America hater William Ayers, Obama, "to change America," directed charitable funds to the communist/socialist ACORN that was intimidating banks to make unsafe mortgage loans and engaging in voter registration fraud, as he well knew, is no reason.

24. That you're troubled that Obama continued his collaboration with Ayers after Ayers allowed himself to be photographed for the cover of Chicago magazine in 2001 standing on the American flag and telling an interviewer the thought of America made him "want to puke," is no reason.

25. That you're troubled that, working jointly with admitted terrorist bomber William Ayers, he steered charitable funds to an Arab-related organization that handed money over to a Palestinian terrorist organization, is no reason.

26. That you're troubled by Obama’s decision to go inside the Chicago Daley Democratic patronage and payoff political machine (often called by Chicago newspapers the “corrupt” Daley Democratic political machine) and become a go-along, loyal member of the machine, which is now running his campaign, is no reason.

27. That you're troubled that as an Illinois state senator Obama refused to support reformers against the Daley patronage and payoff machine, but supported the Chicago Democratic political machine at all times, is no reason.

28. That you’re troubled that in his first run for public office he was able to force all three Democratic opponents off the primary ballot to run unopposed, which if not unprecedented is so highly unusual as to raise questions about the objectivity of Democratic election officials beholden to the Daley political machine which Obama supports, is no reason.

29. That you're troubled by the fact that he is the most extreme advocate of abortion in public life, having pledged to Planned Parenthood as president he would like his first act as president to be signing a bill removing all restrictions on abortion, including partial birth abortion which 75% of all Americans oppose, is no reason.

30. That you're troubled by the fact that he engineered the defeat of a bill in the Illinois senate to protect babies who survive a failed abortion (and then lied about it), a bill that was identical to one that passed Congress unanimously, is no reason.

31. That you're troubled by his callous statement that, if either of his girls made a mistake, he wouldn't want them "punished with a baby," is no reason.

32. That you're troubled by his wife's statements that only now, for the first time in her adult life, she's proud of her country, is no reason.

33. That you're troubled by his wife's view of America as “just downright mean,” is no reason.

34. That you're troubled by his view of America as having done harm to the world for which he must apologize (in Berlin, to Germans no less), is no reason.

35. That you’re troubled that he so often seems ashamed of America, speaking ill of it, as in Berlin, is no reason.

36. That you're troubled that Obama didn't put hand to heart during the national anthem until his advisors told him to, is no reason.

37. That you're troubled that Obama left injured servicemen and women waiting at a military hospital in Germany when he canceled a scheduled visit to work out at a gym, is no reason.

38. That you're troubled that he is so naive that he can say tear down the walls between Muslims and Jews (as in Israel?) and there will be peace, is no reason.

39. That you're troubled by his statements in support of the Palestinian cause and his support by a former member of the terrorist-listed PLO Rashid Khalidi, who is now the director of the most rabid anti-Israel Middle East Studies department in the U.S, is no reason.

40. That you're troubled by his lukewarm and equivocal statements about Israel (for an undivided Jerusalem one day, opposed the next), is no reason.

41. That you're troubled by his vocal support by leaders of Hamas and the lack of support by a leading Israel statesman and author such as Natan Sharansky, is no reason.

42. That you're troubled that Obama's running mate Biden is reported to have told Israelis they had just better get used to the idea of a Iran with nuclear warheads on missiles that can destroy Israel, is no reason.

43. That you're troubled that Obama declined to appear at an anti-Iran rally sponsored by Jewish organizations and made sure that Sarah Palin was disinvited, is no reason.

44. That you're troubled that all Obama wants to do is talk and talk with the leader of our deadly enemy Iran and do nothing of consequence to stop their development of nuclear weapons, is no reason.

45. That you're troubled by his position well over a year ago to withdraw troops from Iraq on a fixed timetable regardless of conditions and to oppose the surge that was not only dangerous for our troops but would have resulted in al-Qaeda taking over Iraq as its new world headquarters, with riches like oil and gas that Afghanistan cannot even dream of, is no reason.

46. That you're troubled by his opposition to doing what is necessary to make America independent of hostile and unstable overseas energy suppliers by drilling for gas and oil domestically and by supporting nuclear power and clean coal along with all other alternatives, is no reason.

47. That you're troubled that Obama naively wants to cut defense spending in an increasingly dangerous world, and that Obama refuses to acknowledge the existence of the Islamic supremacist war against the non-Muslim world, is no reason.

48. That you're troubled that Obama actively and openly spoke in favor of his Muslim cousin Raila Odinga in his recent campaign for president of Kenya, during which he reportedly pledged to decree Islamic law for all Kenyans and ban Christian missionaries throughout the country, is no reason.

49. That you're troubled by his protectionist statements supporting unilaterally repealing NAFTA and opposing the free trade agreement with our hemishere's closest ally Colombia, and his lying about the facts to justify his opposition, is no reason.

50. That you're troubled that he wants to end secret ballots in union elections so as to increase the power of union intimidation, is no reason.

51. That you're troubled that he is so obsessed with himself, appears to be such a narcissist, that he can tell a campaign gathering that light will come down from above and convince them to vote for The Obama, is no reason.

52. That you're troubled that when you look at his record of accomplishment you only see that he has written two books about himself (partially fictionalized, possibly ghost written), graduated from college and law school, spent four years in socialist community organizing, and years in the Illinois senate (voting present 130 times) toeing the Democratic machine line -- and gave a nice speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, is no reason.

53. That you're troubled that he had for years as a major fundraiser (at least $250,000) Syrian-born political fixer and slumlord Tony Rezko, who has been convicted on 16 counts of political corruption, is no reason.

54. That you're troubled that while Rezko was being investigated on corruption charges and reportedly in debt for more than $10 million, Rezko's wife (said to have no assets of her own and income of only $37,000 as a city worker) somehow made it possible for him to buy his dream house in the upscale Hyde Park section of Chicago by buying an adjacent empty lot for full price ($625,000) while Obama purchased his house and lot for a $300,000 discount ($1.65 million) from the same seller on the same day, is no reason.

54. That you're troubled that Rezko's wife shortly thereafter sold a strip of land from the adjacent empty lot that Obama wanted for one-sixth her purchase price, paid for a fence Obama wanted between the properties, then sold off the lot to one of Rezko’s attorneys for an undisclosed price, is no reason.

55. That you're troubled by his plan to give $50 billion of American taxpayer money to the corrupt United Nations for a new anti-poverty program, is no reason.

56. That you’re troubled by his socialist “tax cut” plan to take more money from those who earn it – including imposing higher taxes on hundreds of thousands of small businesses -- and make welfare payments to the 44% (63 million) of American’s who pay no income tax, is no reason.

57. That you're troubled that Obama is hiding so much of his record, that he has refused to allow access to information or has blocked research about his past, such as his joint socialist programs with William Ayers in Chicago, the official State of Hawaii birth records, his Columbia College and Harvard Law School records and years and his ideological affiliations before joining Jeremiah Wright's church, is no reason.

58. That you’re troubled that his campaign has apparently raised tens of millions of dollars from sources outside the country in deliberately small sums (under $200) to avoid federal reporting requirements and the campaign has no controls to identify such sources, some of which are clearly fraudulent, whereas the McCain campaign can track every dollar, is no reason.

59. That you're troubled by what Michael Barone calls the thug tactics of the Obama campaign to silence all criticism with cries of “lies,” “discrimination,” racism,” including even discussion of Obama's socialist and machine partisan activities in Chicago, and that Barone fears an Obama Administration "thugocracy" stifling First Amendment rights, is no reason.

60. That you’re troubled that Obama’s socialism smacks of totalitarianism, as his campaign’s efforts to shut down free speech shows, is no reason.

61. That you’re troubled that Obama is rated the most far left senator in the U.S. Senate, a radical with a socialist agenda "to change" an America he is not proud of to something we will not like, and who is blind to the defense needs of the United States, is no reason.

62. That you're troubled that Obama is so "flexible" and evasive when it comes to telling the truth and just plain lies, is no reason.

63. That you're troubled that he could coldly dismiss the legitimate fears of the white grandmother who raised him as those of a "typical white person," is no reason.

64. That you're troubled that the Chicago Democratic machine that is running his campaign may be intending to take its patronage and payoff operations onto the national stage, at staggering cost to American taxpayers, is no reason.

65. That you're troubled by his elitist attitude towards simple working people, sniffing at them for clinging to their God and their guns, is no reason.

66. That you're troubled by the many, many times that Obama misstated historical facts to suit his own agenda, including misdescribing his past positions, and that the mainstream media did not challenge Obama’s statements, is no reason.

67. That you're troubled by the hypocrisy and double standard of the elite media that can proudly report that 95% of blacks now say they're voting for Obama, but can express horror that some white Americans might vote for McCain, which they assert can only be for racist reasons, is no reason.

68. That you're troubled that the elite media, which has decided it wants a Democratic black president now, whoever it is, qualified or not,, has deliberately avoided its obligations to the American public by refusing to do any detailed investigation into who Obama really is, his alliances, involvement in sleazy machine politics and his history, so that all that exists is the fictionalized narrative contrived by the Chicago Daley Democratic machine that is running his campaign, which leaves too many questions unanswered and voters still wondering "Who is Barack Obama?", is no reason.

69. That you're still troubled about who Obama really is though you are deeply troubled about what you know already and wonder what else he may be hiding, is no reason.

70. That you're troubled that Obama appears to be cleverly hiding who he is, presenting a false image to the world as postpartisan, moderate and a healer, when he is none of those, as his record shows, is no reason.

71. That you're troubled that Obama, if elected, may have a Democratic House and Senate, to implement his extreme socialist agenda of higher taxes, trade protectionism, stifling free enterprise, stifling free speech, enacting extreme pro-abortion policies such as reviving partial-birth abortion, relaxing our defense vigilance, cutting defense spending and increasing taxpayer funding to subversive organizations such as ACORN, is no reason.

72. That you're troubled that foreigners see things so much more clearly than our media and view the president candidate Obama as having a "nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters," is no reason.

73. That you're troubled that, as Professor Thomas Sowell notes, John McCain and Sarah Palin have not spent "decades working with people who hate America" and Obama has, is no reason.

74. That you're troubled that, as Professor Thomas Sowell also notes, the values of John McCain and Sarah Palin "are the values of this nation, whose loyalty and dedication to this country’s fundamental institutions are beyond question" and this cannot be said about Obama, is no reason.

75. That you're troubled by reports that as much as $63 million in campaign contributions to the Obama campaign in amounts smaller than the $200 required to be reported federally are from foreign sources, may be illegal, are not tracked by the Obama campaign though McCain tracks ALL his contributions, and more than 80% of all Obama contributions are not identified and may not be identifiable, is no reason.

76. That you're troubled that the Obama campaign had deliberately collected tens if not hundres of millions of illegal contributions by disabling all security settings on online credit card systems so as to facilitate fake and foreign contributions and contributions over the limit and have no controls for contributions under $200 though the McCain campaign has all such controls, obviously seeking to steal the election and disenfranchise American voters, is no reason.

77. That you're troubled by the Gestapo tactics against Obama critics like the attacks on Joe the Plumber and throwing reporters off the campaign plane whose organizations endorse McCain, is no reason.

That you're troubled that if you don't vote for McCain/Palin you will be doing a dangerous disservice to your country and generations of Americans is no reason, either.

Three Democrats stand out as responsible for costing Americans much of their life savings in the name of putting more people into affordable housing that turned out to be not affordable at all.

The three Democratic politicians who, not accidentally but deliberately, undermined the American financial system and caused this global catastrophe are Barack Obama, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank and Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd.

What is driving the world collapse of the stock markets? What is causing the savings of Americans to shrivel up? Democratic policies.

Yes, it's the world financial credit freeze-up. But what triggered the freeze-up? Democratic policies.

It was the defaults of subprime mortgages packaged and sold by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac around the world. But what caused the defaults? Democratic policies.

Who made banks make unsafe mortgage loans? Well-intentioned Democrats who thought it would be "fair" for people who couldn't afford houses to get them.

Who made Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up those bad loans and palm them off on the world? Democrats in Congress pressured by interest groups such as Obama's ally ACORN.

The cost to investors so far has been hundreds of billions of dollars. American workers who have invested in mutual funds and 401(k)s have suffered badly. People are losing their jobs because of this crisis.

The following account is the story the mainstream media will not tell the American people because they fear it would jeopardize an Obama victory. It will be a travesty and a tragedy for Americans if Democrats capture the White House and Congress after their policies brought on this worldwide catastrophe.

It will be too late after the election to document the involvement of Obama and his Democratic colleagues, whose zeal to change America into a socialist state brought disaster to the world. You know what will happen: Democrats will convene hearings with their favorite witnesses to blame anybody but themselves. Democrats don't like the free enterprise system they meddle with and in this case brought crashing down.

Democratic policies brought on the housing bubble and its collapse, the default of U.S. backed obligations all around the world and panic everywhere. Democrats are pointing the finger at Wall Street, but that doesn't wash. Wall Street was packaging and selling Fannie and Freddie mortgage loans for years. What happened was Fannie and Freddie started buying up so many subprime loans that the packages they were now sending around the world were junk, but still backed by the implicit guaranty of the U.S. government so people, banks and governments bought.

Fannie and Freddie abandoned their obligation to protect the taxpayers of the United States to please the Democratic congressman who were pressing them to expand the subprime mortgage loan market by buying risky loans and giving banks and mortgage companies more money to make more risky loans.

President Bush and Senate Republicans including Senator McCain pleaded with Congress in 2005 and 2006 to pass legislation to get Fannie and Freddie under control. Senate Republicans even got a bill to do just that out of the Senate Banking Committee (S. 190), but Senate Democrats led by Senator Harry Reid and Christopher Dodd, with the vocal backing of Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, said there was no crisis and blocked a vote on the Senate floor. As a Democratic U.S. Senator Obama supported their action.

How key was Obama's role? Obama helped train ACORN operatives in the early 1990s how to bully and intimidate banks and bankers into making risky mortgage loans to those who couldn't afford them, shouting cries of "discrimination" and "racism." Obama was one of the very first pushing for such unsafe loans to be made. Those cries kept building through the '90s and into this decade. As a result, riskier and riskier mortgage loans were made and Fannie and Freddie was pressured more and more by Democrats in Congress to buy the unsafe mortgage loans and send them off in packages to the world as if they were of the same quality they had been in the past. They weren't. Obama lived to see the colossal damage done by his policy of intimidation of banks and indeed to help give the final push to disaster by opposing reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a senator in 2005 and 2006. Despite the world chaos and massive losses to American investors, Obama as late as 2007 was still insisting subprime mortgages were a "good idea."

To read about the roles of the other two principal destroyers of savings, click here. Also, look for the heading Categories on the right side of this website and click on Democratic Financial Crisis.

There is no question that ACORN, Obama's partner since 1991, is doing its best to steal the presidential election for Obama. It is being investigated for fraudulent voter registration activity in more than a dozen states. ACORN recently announced it had registered 1.3 million new voters; how many of those new voters are really ineligible or "repeats" or "dead"? So far, false registrations in the tens of thousands have been thrown out, but it's a safe bet that many, many more will slip through the screening process.

Obama in his early years as a lawyer actually trained ACORN workers in voter registration and ran a registration drive with ACORN himself. He also taught them how to browbeat banks and bankers into making mortgage loans they never should have -- the very beginning of the subprime loan disaster that has brought down the world's financial system and cost investors hundreds of billions of dollars.

What Obama thought was a great idea, beating up banks to make mortgage loans to uncreditworthy borrowers, mushroomed over the years with ACORN very much involved in pressuring banks, Congress and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The subprime loan boom created the housing bubble that ended in its inevitable collapse and the worst stock market fall since 1929 and a world credit freeze-up. Obama, in 2006, opposing legislation putting an end to Fannie and Freddie buying up these dangerously risky subprime loans, insisted the house of cards he helped create was "a good idea."

And guess who's been helping fund ACORN? The taxpayers. Taxpayers helped fund the disaster that has befallen them. Belatedly, there are now demands for investigations and an end to taxpayer assistance to this criminal enterprise.

Obama did not cause this catastrophe all by himself. In Congress, Democratic Senators Dodd and Reid worked to block legislation in 2005 and 2006 from getting a vote in the Senate after Senate Republicans voted S. 190 out of committee. Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts was prominent at hearings insisting that Fannie and Freddie were sound and in no trouble and didn't need a new regulator and didn't need to stop buying the subprime loans banks and mortgage lenders were more than happy to get rid of.

These Democratic economic policies have cost the nation, taxpayers and investors dearly.

Barack Obama's efforts in the 1990s to force banks to make unsafe mortgage loans was his early attempt to "spread the wealth." It ended in catastrophe.

Obama's new plan to "spread the wealth" which he inadvertently disclosed to Joe the Plumber will likewise lead to catastrophe for the American and world economies.

The sane vote is for a Republican Congress and McCain/Palin. But will Obama's ACORN deliver enough fraudulent votes to bring more grief to America?

October 23, 2008
Obama's Red Shirts
Voter Fraud: Republican leaders want to defund and criminally investigate ACORN. Why should taxpayer dollars fund a "nonpartisan" organization that proclaims "Obama needs ACORN, and we need Obama."

ACORN calls itself a "nonpartisan" group seeking to register minorities and the poor. But its political arm has endorsed Barack Obama, who both trained the group's staff and sued the state of Illinois on their behalf. And Obama's campaign has given ACORN affiliates $800,000 for a get-out-the-vote drive.

In fact, it's a get-out-the-vote for Obama drive as evidenced by a video recently aired by Fox News that showed just how "nonpartisan" the group is. It was taken at ACORN's national convention where Rep. Maxine Waters spoke to a sea of ACORN organizers wearing their uniform of red baseball caps and shirts.

Waters, to great applause and cheers, said: "This has been the worst presidency that this country has ever known. But that's all right. We're getting rid of his (President Bush's) ass. He's got to go."

The next speaker, an ACORN representative defined who "we" meant. She said: "We're getting Obama for president! Obama needs us, ACORN, but we need Obama. Don't we? Yeah!"

A list of government funding of ACORN released by Boehner reveals that some $31 million in taxpayer dollars have been given to the group since 1998. Using Federal Register records, Boehner found ACORN got the money through 54 individual grants in 11 different states.

They would have gotten much more if the original Democratic version of the federal rescue bill had passed. It gave to groups such as ACORN 20% of any profits from the future resale of acquired mortgages, a massive potential rip-off of taxpayers.

"House Republicans worked together to stop the majority from using taxpayer dollars to fill a slush fund created just for ACORN, but now we must go further to turn off the spigot of federal grants on which ACORN depends," Boehner said last week.

Cornyn notes that, due to the efforts of ACORN's red shirts in "Harris County, Texas, which includes the City of Houston, election officials either rejected or discovered serious deficiencies with nearly 40% of the 27,000 registration cards filed by ACORN from January through July of this year."

ACORN will say its voting activities are separate and not funded by the taxpayer. But money is fungible. Cornyn recently wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, arguing "that because the violations of federal voting laws by ACORN employees appear to be so widespread, ACORN and its affiliates should be investigated as a criminal enterprise."

We agree. Those orchestrating this attempt to steal the 2008 election should go to jail.

Who are the fathers of today's world financial meltdown?

Who has cost investors hundreds of billions and workers hundreds of thousands of American jobs? Who has put the world on the edge of a Depression?

Three Democratic politicians who, not accidentally but deliberately, undermined the American financial system: Barack Obama, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank and Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd.

The following account is the story the mainstream media will not tell the American people because they fear it would jeopardize an Obama victory. Maybe after the election they will document the involvement of Obama and his Democratic colleagues, whose zeal to change America into a socialist state brought disaster to the world.

ACORN is a communist/socialist organization whose mission is to "change America.,"

Barack Obama has been allied with ACORN since at least 1992 in its efforts to "change America." He has trained ACORN workers in how to intimidate banks and bankers into making mortgage loans they should not make and how to register voters. Obama ran a voter registration drive himself with ACORN in the early 1990s. Obama has represented ACORN in suing to "change America."

The kind of unsound loans that ACORN forced banks to make in its mission to "change America" are at the heart of the housing bubble, its collapse and the financial wreckage now destroying the savings of Americans and costing American jobs.

ACORN also has been working to "change America" by massive voter registration fraud to register Democratic voters. This year it claims it has registered 1.7 million new voters; one can guess the percentage of Democrats. Voter registration fraud investigations involving ACORN are ongoing in 12 states right now. Obama paid ACORN over $800,000 this year for voter registration despite its long and notorious involvement in voter registration fraud complaints, investigations and convictions. One recent report is of a young man bribed by ACORN with "cash and cigs" to sign up 72 times.

ACORN did not stop with intimidation of mortgage lenders to force them to make bad loans. Stanley Kurtz details how ACORN moved on to Congress to get Democratic support for throwing sane lending standards out the window and authorizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up these unsound loans from mortgage lenders. The present world financial crisis is the result. As Kurtz notes, "the bad seed that started it all was ACORN."

HOW does Barack Obama fit into all of this? Obama has been a key ally of Chicago ACORN going back to his days as a community organizer.

Later, as a young lawyer, he offered leadership training to the activists who were forcing Chicago banks into high-risk subprime loans. And when he made it on to the boards of Chicago's Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he channeled money ACORN's way.

Obama was perfectly aware of ACORN's intimidation tactics - indeed, he oversaw a Woods Fund report that boasted of managing to fund the radical group despite its shocking behavior.

And as a lawmaker, in Illinois and in Washington, he has continued to back ACORN's legislative agenda.

And allied with ACORN in Congress in pushing to loosen mortgage lending standards was none other than Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank. And later, in 2005 and 2006, it was Barney Frank, Senators Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama who blocked efforts of the President and John McCain and other Republicans to stop Fannie's and Freddie's dangerous subprime mortgage purchase programs that brought on this world financial crisis.

The kind of change Obama's bad judgment has already brought to America has cost the nation dearly in dollars, lost jobs and the integrity of the voting system. Will voter fraud nonetheless win him the election?

Read the appalling story in its entirety.

It isn't often that one can identify with precision the principal culprits who cause a disaster, but that is not the case with this financial crisis. We know who. It's Frank, Obama and Dodd.

At its heart is the housing bubble and its collapse largely due to the explosion of subprime loans to those who reality has proven couldn't afford them.

Democrats and community agitators like Barack Obama pushed -- intimidated and terrorized -- banks to make mortgage loans they would never make in their sound business judgment. Subprime loans rose from 2% of total loans to 30% in just four years -- 2002 to 2006. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought most of them, to the relief of the banks who made the loans under pressure from Clinton-era Community Reinvestment Act rules, urged on by Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank and Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd.

Barack Obama, fresh out of college, learned the practices of intimidation as a community organizer. He soon realized he could accomplish more working for his socialist goals inside the system rather than from the outside. So he went to law school to learn how to wield power on higher levels. During his time at law school, he learned even more about the Alinsky community organizing tactics of intimidation by moonlighting at the Industrial Areas Foundation. On his return to Chicago, Obama, working for ACORN, was a pioneer in forcing unsound loans to be made, training those who terrorized banks, bankers and public officials into making loans they shouldn't have. (He also ran a voter registration drive for ACORN, which has been implicated in voter registration fraud time and time again.)

Meanwhile, Frank and Dodd in the U.S. Congress were pushing Fannie and Freddie to buy up those shaky loans, stamp them with the U.S. guaranty and sell them to buyers around the world. As a consequence, subprime loans mushroomed.

Frank and Dodd blocked Bush and McCain efforts to restore sanity to Fannie and Freddie. When the Bush Administration together with Senate Republicans, including John McCain, tried to rein Fannie/Freddie in in 2003, 2005 and 2006, Democrats led by Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd blocked all those efforts, scoffing that there was no Fannie/Freddie crisis. Obama, who in earlier years had worked to force banks into subprime lending, of course did nothing and remained silent, while collecting over $100,000 in campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie. In fact, as a senator he was quoted as saying that a subprime loan was a good thing.

The inevitable collapse occurred. Fannie and Freddie had spread so much subprime debt around the world, panic resulted.

As Obama's Reverend Jeremiah Wright said in another context, the Democratic chickens have come home to roost, but these three haven't suffered, It's average Americans who have lost hundreds of billions in their savings because of the reckless policies of Frank, Obama and Dodd.

Socialist agitators such as Saul Alinsky, whose methods Obama studied and applied in his community organizing and lawyer days in Chicago, believed the best way to get to a Marxist socialist society is to create chaos and bring the free enterprise system down, while blaming it for all the problems his followers helped to create. Was financial chaos in the Obama vision as a prelude to a socialist society? If so, Marxist revolutionary change is at hand. That hundreds of millions have suffered in the process is just an unfortunate side effect of creating a more humane, more just socialist society. Obama made it clear that higher taxes will be the start of Obama's socialist program of wealth redistribution, taking what's yours to those who claim it should be theirs.

Those who could not afford their mortgages and now face foreclosure, the government will not only give them interest relief, it will reduce the mortgage principal (that is, the money borrowed in the first place) and stretch out payments for up to 50 years. If the house wasn't affordable before, it certainly will be now. (Section 110 of the bailout bill.) If you are struggling but making your payments to protect your home, you get no relief from section 110. Only the deadbeats benefit.

It may seem complicated, but it's really simple.

Subprime loans created the housing bubble. When the housing bubble broke, the crisis spread throughout the world since Fannie/Freddie obligations were held by central banks and commercial banks in all countries. They bought because the obligations were sold by government-sponsored agencies, so of course the U.S. government stood behind them. Rating agencies agreed and rated the paper AAA, triple-A, the highest and safest rating there is.

But those at Fannie/Freddie were working to please their Democratic sponsors in Congress and ignored the lack of creditworthiness that was increasing in the portfolios they were selling. The much maligned Wall Street firms relied on Fannie and Freddie to assemble creditworthy packages that protected the credit of the U.S,, which was their prime responsibility. Fannie and Feddie officials such as Raines and Johnson, both advisors to the Obama campaign, are the ones at Fannie who failed to protect the American people.

Now Barney Frank is trying to deflect criticism of his socialist profligacy by claiming that any criticism of the subprime loan explosion is a Republican slam at black borrowers. In other words, criticism of the disaster they created is racist.

How pathetic.

Investor's Business Daily does an excellent job of summarizing the sorry saga.

Barney Frank's Bankrupt Ideas
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY |Tuesday October 07, 2008

Financial Rescue: Democrats created the mortgage crisis by forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn't afford them. Now Obama and Biden want bankruptcy judges to bail out the same deadbeat homeowners.

It's been said that history is a lie agreed upon. Democrats are trying to rewrite history by blaming the Bush administration for the current crisis and claiming that the rescue bill is necessary to save the economy from Republican mismanagement.

More blarney from Barney.

Last Thursday on Fox News, when Bill O'Reilly tried to suggest that both parties might share the blame, House Finance Committee Chairman Frank, in a not atypical meltdown, disowned any responsibility for his lack of oversight over the last two years and his complicity before that.

Frank also claimed: "The fact is, it was 1994 that we passed a bill to tell the Fed to stop the subprime lending. We tried to get them to do it." In other words, those rascally Republicans did it all when they took control of Congress that November.

More...

As Democrats aided by the media have been doing all they could to blame eight years of the Bush Administration for the financial panic now circling the globe, it was Congressional Democrats who allowed the housing bubble to get out of control, leading to the inevitable collapse that was so big it has shaken the entire financial system.

It started with local agitators across the country demanding banks make loans they never should have to people who couldn't afford them. In the forefront was ACORN, the national socialist organization, terrorizing and intimidating banks, bank and public officials into loosening lending standards. The ACORN chapter in Chicago was one of the national leaders in blackmailing banks; their people were trained in their intimidation tactics by none other than Barack Obama.

Then Democrats in Congress urged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up all these risky loans that banks were more than happy to get rid of; they didn't want to make them in the first place. Then Fannie and Freddie had Wall Street package the loans and sell them around the world. With the assumed guaranty of the U.S. government behind the securities of these public sponsored agencies everyone bought relying on the credit of the U.S.

Efforts to slow down and stop the incredible expansion of subprime loans made possible by Fannie and Freddie (from 2% of total loans in 2002 to 30% in 2006) were blocked by Democrats in Congress led by Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. John McCan was urging reform; Obama was not. Instead, Obama in just his very short time in the Senate became the second biggest recipient over 20 years of Fannie/Freddie campaign contributions (second only to Senator Dodd).

As a result of the Democrats' "do good' socialism, taxpayers will wind up paying hundreds of billions of dollars. Investors have already lost hundreds of billions of dollars and it could get worse if the bailout doesn't succeed. Warren Buffet thinks the $700 billion bailout may not be enough to stave off recession or worse.

Before the bailout bill to rescue the financial system from Democratic excess passed, Fox News presented an excellent short summary of how it all came about.

So put the blame where it belongs -- on Obama-type Marxist socialism pushed along by Democrats in Congress.

Dr. Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution in economics and public policy, points out how crazy it is to look to Congress to develop a solution for the financial crisis when they were the people who caused it in the first place. Special mention is given to the two chief culprits Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

Whatever is done, Dr. Sowell says, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be wound down and put out of our misery as soon as practicable. No more private corporations with federal "implicit" guaranties. Brilliantly right, as always.

Bailout Politics Thomas Sowell Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional "leaders" invited to the White House to devise a bailout "solution" are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said "I do not see" any "possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury."

Moreover, he said that the federal government has "probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing."

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they "need to do more" to help subprime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

So the rescue bill failed and the media immediately began babbling about how the Republicans in the House didn't come through. In fact, the majority Democrats have all the votes they need to pass a bill without a single Republican vote. Democrat Speaker of the House Pelosi did not crack the whip of party discipline and 95 Democrats voted no, when if only 11 more of them had voted yes the bill would have passed.

Much has been made of Pelosi's highly partisan pre-vote speech ladling blame for the financial crisis on the Bush Administration and Republican policies. Is that the way to build a coalition on a must-pass bill?

Some have speculated that Members of the House may have decided Pelosi knew something they didn't know, that perhaps the bill wasn't all that do-or-die or else she wouldn't have leveled such a partisan shot against Republicans. Calls to Congress were running 40 or more to 1 against the bailout bill, so many Members were nervous about voting yes. Well, if Pelosi didn't think the bill was all that important, it's not surprising that a number of Republicans (who despised the bill) and 95 Democrats voted no.

Such reckless Democratic incompetence in economic matters -- and governing -- is taking a savage toll on the American economy and the life savings of all Americans.

Those who track such figures note that the losses in the U.S. stock markets at the close of business after the bill's defeat were $1.1 trillion, some $400 billion more than the rescue bill would have authorized be spent to stabilize the financial markets.

Principally responsible for the housing bubble and its collapse is of course Democratic House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, who blocked the many demands for reining in Fannie and Freddie by the Bush Administration and Republicans, including Senator McCain, going back to 2003 and continuing into 2007. Now Pelosi has added one trillion dollars to the Frank-induced losses as American savers watch in horror as their life savings shrivel.

More losses are almost certain to follow as rescue proponents regroup and the clock ticks on without a solution. No official business is expected in Congress till Wednesday or, more likely, Thursday.

UPDATE: A Karl Rove analysis of the vote and other sources indicate that Speaker Pelosi allowed several of her senior colleagues, including House Chairmen, and 16 vulnerable freshmen to vote no. Republicans saw and heard this and concluded that Pelosi apparently had some inside information and didn't think the vote was such a big deal. So many Republicans voted what they felt: It was a bad bill, representing too much government intervention in the economy.

Also, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Obama campaign co-chairman, from Chicago, voted no. A subcommittee chairman on Barney Frank's committee voted no.

SECOND UPDATE: A Republican on Capitol Hill explains why the bill is viewed as bad by Republicans and offers a few alternatives that would be more in keeping with a market economy:

And as for alternatives:

- how about reinforcing FDIC to give people confidence in their savings? Maybe more support for money markets?

- How about cutting corporate taxes or cap gains taxes?

- How about buying up (or financing the purchase of) the AAA securities that currently are having trouble moving but are not “toxic,” in order to increase liquidity and help with possible insolvency for healthier institutions rather than the old line investment banks?

- How about doing something about the silliness of the $62 Trillion Credit Default Swap market (e.g. the margin requirements, etc…)?

- How about immediately changing mark-to-market rules?

- And – heaven forbid – how about belt-tightening in Washington? Don’t hold your breath – but imagine what a signal that would send – a freeze in discretionary spending, a moratorium on earmarks and a real plan to educate America about entitlements and talk about the need to get our fiscal house in order.

THIRD UPDATE: It now appears that Pelosi planned it all. She gave her people a pass, figuring the Republicans would provide enough votes to put the bill through anf then the Democrats would use their votes to beat them over the head in the November election. Too clever and her cynical politicizing cost the nation's markets one trillion dollars.

In late 2004 there was a hearing in the House of Representatives about the fraudulent accounting, excessive executive compensation and increasing risks at Fannie Mae. This video shows how Democrats and Republicans responded to the warning contained in the regulator's report calling for reforms to be enacted by Congress. Needless to say, Republicans supported reforms, but House Democrats, led by ranking committtee member Barney Frank of Massachusetts, dismissed the report of dangerous risk as fiction, maintaining that in fact there were no problems at Fannie Mae.

It is Democratic opposition to reining Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in that created the housing bubble and its inevitable collapse and the worldwide financial meltdown that has followed. All of the money lost in 401(k)s and other savings is due to the dereliction of duty on the part of Congressional Democrats more interested in currying favor with their special interest constituencies and obtaining campaign contributions and other goodies from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than protecting the economy of this country and the life savings of hard-working Americans. Even former president Clinton agrees that Democrats in Congress blocking Republican attempts at reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are responsible for this financial crisis.

To round out the sorry picture of Democratic malfeasance, the ten-minute video included in our earlier entry "History of the "Affordable Housing" Bubble and Collapse" is a fitting companion to this video.

At a press conference today it was announced that an amended rescue plan (which was significantly improved by House Republicans over the original plan, which they had rejected) had been agreed to,

In announcing the agreement, Democrats House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Financial Services Committee Frank railed at Wall Street greed and acted as if the financial collapse was Wall Street's fault (which the media will echo, as it already has). It wasn't. Blame lies squarely with those very same Congressional Democrats.

It can't be said often enough the fault lies with Congressional Democrats who constantly pushed government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up every subprime loan offered to them -- and to issue their own as well, regardless of the credit of the borrower. Democrats had loosened requirements so much that virtually everyone could get a mortgage loan for "affordable housing," which in many cases is turning out to be unaffordable.

To raise money for new mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac packages mortgage loans up and sells them to the world. As has been the case since 1968, the loan packages are rated AAA, triple-A, the highest quality rating there is, because of the "implicit" guaranty of the U.S. government. Buyers rely not so much on what is in the package but on the backing of the U.S. government. That the packages sold over the past few years weren't creditworthy was the fault of Fannie and Freddie and their Democratic backers in Congress. (Subprime mortgages skyrocketed from 2% of total mortgages in 2002 to 30% in 2006.)

It was Fannie and Freddie that bought and assembled the uncreditworthy mortgages into packages; when the housing bubble (created by the demand for housing fueled by all the new folks who "qualified" for mortgage loans) started to deflate, the worst mortgages began to default, wiping out the value forf those who had bought those parts of the packages; naturally, those buyers demanded that they be protected because of the backing of the federal government.

The situation rapidly deteriorated and the Bush Administration had to step in and take over Fannie and Freddie, firing their top executives who were responsible for the lax standards and jeopadizing American taxpayes as a result. As one of those executives told a newspaper just weeks before the takeover, it was Democrats in Congress who constantly pressured them to relax standards and do more for "affordable housing."

In 2003 and 2005 the Bush Administration and Alan Greenspan called on Congress to tighten standards immediately and stop the out-of-control growth of subprime lending, warning of danger to the financial system and the economy. Democrat Barney Frank of Massachusetts, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, led the opposition, saying there was no crisis and the Administration was crying "wolf."

Legislation prepared by Senate Repubicans in 2005 and backed by the Administraton and John McCain to rein in Fannie and Freddie was rejected by Democrats and died. Again, Barney Frank was in the lead, accompanied by Democrats Dodd of Connecticut, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, and Reid of Utah, Minority Leader. The Bush Administration made more than 15 appeals to Congress to act before it was too late.

The collapse of the overheated housing market has caused the entire financial system to come close to a total halt, so drastic action is required. Secretary of the Treasury Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke immediately proposed a plan, which has now been strengthened considerably by House Republicans and will have bipartisan support in Congress. It stands an excellent chance of stabilizing the world financial system and over the long run, several years, it may well prove to be profitable for American taxpayers

The nation is fortunate that President Bush appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve and as Secretary of the Treasury two such highly-qualified individuals who have the intelligence, experience, vision and creativity to deal with this financial crisis.

It can be hoped that the worst is past, but there no doubt will be rough days ahead. But there is a rescue plan in place that should do the job.

Here's the top five recipients of campaign contributions (all Democrats) from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the period 1989-2008.

What's amazing is that Obama collected so much money in such a short time in the U.S. Senate to be number 2 on the list that covers 20 years.

Oh, and Massachusetts' Barney Frank, who was perhaps the major figure in blocking efforts to rein Fannie and Freddie in in 2003 and later, was 16th, with $40,100 in campaign contributions.

1. Dodd, Christopher J
S
D-CT
$133,900

2. Kerry, John
S
D-MA
$111,000

3. Obama, Barack
S
D-IL
$105,849

4. Clinton, Hillary
S
D-NY
$75,550

5. Kanjorski, Paul E
H
D-PA
$65,500

There is a lot to absorb about the financial crisis that the nation finds itself in. No one can be certain what the best remedy is to get the credit markets unstuck and to keep the economy from falling into recession. Hopefully, what is hammered out this weekend will start moving things in the right direction.

However, how we got into this mess is not so difficult to understand -- good intentions and venality run wild. Democratic housing programs for the low income and minorities spun out of control and Democratic supporters of the programs successfully blocked efforts to rein them in and keep them from exploding. "Affordable housing" was not affordable.

This ten-minute video tells the story. There is a lot in it. To read some of the quoted articles, just push the pause button. Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank is of course a featured participant, since he was a key player in blocking reform in 2003 and later.

As for accuracy, the maker of the video invites one and all to check the facts by googling or however else one wishes to proceed.

The folks at Power Line remind us of this 2003 article in the New York Times, once the respected newspaper of record:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. ...

The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant lobbying battles of the Congressional session. ...

''The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,'' Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ''We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,'' the independent agency that now regulates the companies. ...

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." (emphasis added)

The New York Times is no longer respected and House Democrats didn't support the reforms for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

That the mainstream media is looking into this is amazing.

How the symbiotic (incestuous, other might say) relationship caused this financial cataclysm is going unreported.

Excerpts:

Media Mum on Barney Frank's Connection

Jeff Poor January 25, 2005

Are journalists playing favorites with some of the key political figures involved with regulatory oversight of U.S. financial markets?

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews launched several vitriolic attacks on the Republican Party on his Sept. 17, 2008, show, suggesting blame for Wall Street problems should be focused in a partisan way. However, he and other media have failed to thoroughly examine the Democratic side of the blame game.

Prominent Democrats ran Fannie Mae, the same government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that donated campaign cash to top Democrats. And one of Fannie Mae’s main defenders in the House – Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., [is] a recipient of more than $40,000 in campaign donations from Fannie since 1989.

Is there a simple way to describe how the world financial crisis started and unfolded? Stephen Schwartzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, did that at a roundtable of 20 financial experts in New York sponsored by the Yale School of Management this Tuesday:

"It's a perfect storm. It started with Congress encouraging lending to lower-income people. You went from subprime loans being 2% of total loans in 2002 to 30% of total loans in 2006. That kind of enormous increase swept into the net people who shouldn't have been borrowing.(emphasis added)

Those loans were packaged into CDOs rated AAA, which led the investment-banking firms [buying them] to do little to no due diligence, and the securities were distributed throughout the world, where they started defaulting.

It all started during the Clinton years when new regulations pressured banks to make loans to less creditworthy people, often living in neighborhoods that bankers considered too risky. Traditionally, many if not most banks held mortgage loans for the life of the loans and relied on their deposits for new money with which to make new mortgage loans.

Now banks became uneasy with the new loans they were making and wanted to get them off their books. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said they would take those subprime loans off their hands and subprime loans skyrocketed from 2% to 30% of all mortgage loans in just four years. Such receptivity of Fannie and Freddie to subprime loans encouraged nonbank mortgage companies to accelerate their subprime loan business and to sell their loans to Fannie and Freddie, too.

As the Barney Frank market tumbles and 401(k)s shrink, we all start thinking about how we can save a buck. If you're a little clever and somewhat talented and you're wondering if you can afford that basement renovation project, here's an answer.

Click here.

They know how to do things in Kentucky.

As the Democrats in Congress scramble to get their buddies in the media to blame "Wall Street" and the Bush Administration for the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac meltdown, there are some who see the picture clearly. It was them (we know: they).

That capitalist broadsheet Investor's Business Daily has a crystal clear view. It will be publishing a series of analyses and this one is the first. Knowing what we know already, it's all too accurate.

Was this a crisis that surprised everyone? Not at all. There are culprits.

President Bush, reviled and criticized by Democrats, tried no fewer than 17 times, by White House count, to raise the issue of Fannie-Freddie reform. A bill cleared the Senate Banking panel in 2005, but stalled due to implacable opposition from Democrats and a critical core of GOP abettors. Rep. Barney Frank, who now runs the powerful House Financial Services Committee, helped spearhead that fight.

Barney Frank was most recently quoted as saying this:

"The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it."

The truth is indeed the first casualty when those who are responsible are running for cover.

September 22, 2008
'Crony' Capitalism Is Root Cause Of Fannie And Freddie Troubles
By TERRY JONES in Investor's Business Daily

In the past couple of weeks, as the financial crisis has intensified, a new talking point has emerged from the Democrats in Congress: This is all a "crisis of capitalism," in socialist financier George Soros' phrase, and a failure to regulate our markets sufficiently.

Well, those critics may be right — it is a crisis of capitalism. A crisis of politically driven crony capitalism, to be precise.

Indeed, Democrats have so effectively mastered crony capitalism as a governing strategy that they've convinced many in the media and the public that they had nothing whatsoever to do with our current financial woes.

Barack Obama has repeatedly blasted "Bush-McCain" economic policies as the cause, as if the two were joined at the hip.

Funny, because over the past 8 years, those who tried to fix Fannie Mae(FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE)— the trigger for today's widespread global financial meltdown — were stymied repeatedly by congressional Democrats.

This wasn't an accident. Though some key Republicans deserve blame as well, it was a concerted Democratic effort that made reform ofFannie and Freddie impossible.

The reason for this is simple: Fannie and Freddie became massive providers both of reliable votes among grateful low-income homeowners, and of massive giving to the Democratic Party by grateful investment bankers, both at the two government-sponsored enterprises and on Wall Street.

The result: A huge taxpayer rescue that at last estimate is approaching $700 billion but may go even higher.

It all started, innocently enough, in 1994 with President Clinton's rewrite of the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act.

Ostensibly intended to help deserving minority families afford homes — a noble idea — it instead led to a reckless surge in mortgage lending that has pushed our financial system to the brink of chaos.

Subprime's Mentors

Fannie and Freddie, the main vehicle for Clinton's multicultural housing policy, drove the explosion of the subprime housing market by buying up literally hundreds of billions of dollars in substandard loans — funding loans that ordinarily wouldn't have been made based on such time-honored notions as putting money down, having sufficient income, and maintaining a payment record indicating creditworthiness.

With all the old rules out the window, Fannie and Freddie gobbled up the market. Using extraordinary leverage, they eventually controlled 90% of the secondary market mortgages. Their total portfolio of loans topped $5.4 trillion — half of all U.S. mortgage lending. They borrowed $1.5 trillion from U.S. capital markets with — wink, wink — an "implicit" government guarantee of the debts.

This created the problem we are having today.

As we noted a week ago, subprime lending surged from around $35 billion in 1994 to nearly $1 trillion last year — for total growth of 2,757% as of last year.

No real market grows that fast for that long without being fixed.

And that's just what Fannie and Freddie were — fixed. They became a government-run, privately owned home finance monopoly.

Fannie and Freddie became huge contributors to Congress, spending millions to influence votes. As we've noted here before, the bulk of the money went to Democrats.

Dollars To Dems

Meanwhile, Fannie and Freddie also became a kind of jobs program for out-of-work Democrats.

Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, the CEOs under whom the worst excesses took place in the late 1990s to mid-2000s, were both high-placed Democratic operatives and advisers to presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick also got taken care of by the Fannie-Freddie circle. So did top Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel, among others.

On the surface, this sounds innocent. Someone has to head the highly political Fannie and Freddie, right?

But this is why crony capitalism is so dangerous. Those in power at Fannie and Freddie, as the sirens began to wail about some of their more egregious practices, began to bully those who opposed them.

That included journalists, like the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot, and GOP congressmen, like Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, whom Fannie and Freddie actively lobbied against in his own district. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who tried to hold hearings on Fannie's and Freddie's questionable accounting practices in 2004, found himself stripped of responsibility for their oversight by House Speaker Dennis Hastert — a Republican.

Where, you ask, were the regulators?

Congress created a weak regulator to oversee Freddie and Fannie — the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight — which had to go hat in hand each year to Capitol Hill for its budget, unlike other major regulators.

With lax oversight, Fannie and Freddie had a green light to expand their operations at breakneck speed.

Fannie and Freddie had a reliable coterie of supporters in the Senate, especially among Democrats.

"We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years," wrote economist Kevin Hassett on Bloomberg.com this week.

Buying Friends In High Places

Over the span of his career, Obama ranks No. 2 in campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie, taking over $125,000. Dodd, head of the Senate Banking panel, is tops at $165,000. Clinton, ranked 12th, has collected $75,000.

Meanwhile, Freddie and Fannie opened what were euphemistically called "Partnership Offices" in the districts of key members of Congress to channel millions of dollars in funding and patronage to their supporters.

In the space of a little more than a decade, Fannie and Freddie spent close to $150 million on lobbying efforts. So pervasive were their efforts, they seemed unassailable, even during a Republican administration.

Yet, by 2004, the crony capitalism had gone too far. Even OFHEO issued a report essentially criticizing Fannie and Freddie for Enron-style accounting that let them boost profits in order to pay their politically well-connected executives hefty bonuses.

It emerged that Clinton aide Raines, who took Fannie Mae's helm as CEO in 1999, took in nearly $100 million by the time he left in 2005. Others, including former Clinton Justice Department official Gorelick, took $75 million from the Fannie-Freddie piggy bank.

Even so, Fannie and Freddie were forced to restate their earnings by some $3.5 billion, due to the accounting shenanigans.

As we noted, those who tried to halt this frenzy of activity found themselves hit by a political buzz saw.

President Bush, reviled and criticized by Democrats, tried no fewer than 17 times, by White House count, to raise the issue of Fannie-Freddie reform. A bill cleared the Senate Banking panel in 2005, but stalled due to implacable opposition from Democrats and a critical core of GOP abettors. Rep. Barney Frank, who now runs the powerful House Financial Services Committee, helped spearhead that fight.

Now, with the taxpayer tab approaching $1 trillion or more, we're learning the costs of crony capitalism.

As the photo session shown above was taking place on Monday,September 22nd, Barney Frank, surrounded by the ever attentive press, is quoted as saying this:

"The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it."

George Orwell, report to Congress. Actually, this is more than doublespeak. It is a deliberate misstatement of historical fact, what sometimes is called a bald-faced lie.

If one can point to one person and one moment when a dangerous situation was given what turned out to be an irrreversible push towards inevitable financial disaster, it is to Barney Frank in 2003:

Fannie and Freddie retained the support of many in Congress, particularly Democrats, and they were allowed to continue unrestrained. Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass), for example, now the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, openly described the "arrangement" with the GSEs at a committee hearing on GSE reform in 2003: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping to make housing more affordable . . . a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing." The hint to Fannie and Freddie was obvious: Concentrate on affordable housing and, despite your problems, your congressional support is secure.

The financial cost to American taxpayers will not be known for years, but early estimates place it in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Some say more than a trillion.

Barney Frank not only gave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the green flag in 2003, he brushed aside attempts to rein them in. In April, 2004:

Rep. Frank ignored the warnings, accusing the Administration of creating an "artificial issue." At a speech to the Mortgage Bankers Association conference, Rep. Frank said "people tend to pay their mortgages. I don't think we are in any remote danger here. This focus on receivership, I think, is intended to create fears that aren't there."

Democrats in Congress, led by Frank and Dodd, encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their reckless lending and then turned a deaf ear to warnings, from Alan Greenspan, the Bush Administration and John McCain among others, that tighter standards and oversight had to be put in place or financial disaster would follow.

In 2005 the Republican-controlled Senate Banking Committee passed a bill to provide supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the Senate Democratic leadership rejected it. Since not enough Democrats would vote for it to achieve a 60-vote filibuster proof majority, the bill died. The House version never received any action, because other bills to give Fannie and Freddie more money for affordable housing initiatives and Katrina hurricane relief took precedence.

While it has been widely reported that Democratic Senate Banking Committee Chairman Dodd was number one in campaign contributions from Fannie/Freddie sources and Obama was number three, Barney Frank's number 16 position has not received the attention it deserves. These Democrats got Fannie and Freddie campaign money because of their unquestioning support.

Now the press will dutifully report that it's the dreaded private sector that is responsible for the American public's financial losses and it is up to government to save them.

As usual, the clear-thinking and plain-speaking economist Dr. Thomas Sowell explains today's financial quagmire very well. Principal warning: Beware the polliticians seeking to spend your money for you. Beware especially of those who led the way into the current mess.

The Wall Street Journal, which has for years been sounding the alarm about the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently cited Senator Christopher Dodd along with Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Barney Frank among those on Capitol Hill who have been "shilling" for these financial institutions, downplaying the risks and opposing attempts to restrict their free-wheeling role in the mortgage market.

Where have we heard those names before?

A Political "Solution"

By Thomas Sowell

Estimates of how much money a government program will cost are notoriously unreliable. Estimates of the cost of the current bailout in the financial markets run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and some say it may reach or exceed a trillion.

Many people have trouble even forming some notion of what such numbers as billion and trillion mean. One way to get some idea of the magnitude of a trillion is to ask: How long ago was a trillion seconds?

A trillion seconds ago, no one on this planet could read and write. Neither the Roman Empire nor the ancient Chinese dynasties had yet come into existence. None of the founders of the world's great religions today had yet been born.

That's what a trillion means. Put a dollar sign in front of it and that's what the current bailout may cost.

Will that money be spent wisely? It is theoretically possible. But don't bet the rent money on it or you could end up among the homeless.

Whenever there is a lot of the taxpayers' money around, politicians are going to find ways to spend it that will increase their chances of getting re-elected by giving goodies to voters.

The longer it takes Congress to pass the bailout bill, the more of those goodies are going to find their way into the legislation. Speed is important, not just to protect the financial markets but to protect the taxpayers from having more of their hard-earned money squandered by politicians.

Regardless of what Barack Obama or John McCain may say they are going to do as president, after a trillion dollars has been taken off the top there is going to be a lot less left in the federal treasury for them to do anything with.

Already Senator Christopher Dodd is talking about extending the bailout from the financial firms to homeowners facing mortgage foreclosures-- as if the point of all this is to play Santa Claus.

The huge federal debts that we already have are the ghosts of Christmas past.

Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts.

The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.

We do not need a replay of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the failure of thousands of banks meant a drastic reduction of credit-- and therefore a drastic reduction of the demand needed to keep production going and millions of people employed.

But bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. It makes political sense only to people like Senator Dodd, who are among the reasons for the financial mess in the first place.

People usually stop making ill-advised decisions when they are forced to face the consequences of those decisions, not when politicians come to their rescue and make the taxpayers pay for decisions that the taxpayers had nothing to do with.

The Wall Street Journal, which has for years been sounding the alarm about the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently cited Senator Christopher Dodd along with Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Barney Frank among those on Capitol Hill who have been "shilling" for these financial institutions, downplaying the risks and opposing attempts to restrict their free-wheeling role in the mortgage market.

As recently as July of this year, Senator Dodd declared Fannie Mae and Freddie "fundamentally strong" and said there is no need for "panicking" about them. But now that the chickens have come home to roost, Senator Dodd wants to be sure to get some goodies from the rescue legislation to pass out to people likely to vote for him.

Don't make any bets on how this situation is going to turn out-- except that we can predict that politicians will blame the "greed" of other people. You can bet the rent money on that.

Dr. Sowell is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and the author of many books on economics and other subjects.

Today's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal is another look into how the financial crisis the world is now experiencing could have been averted or at least have been much more limited in scope and far less damaging.

Key paragraphs:

The strategy of [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] presenting themselves to Congress as the champions of affordable housing appears to have worked. Fannie and Freddie retained the support of many in Congress, particularly Democrats, and they were allowed to continue unrestrained. Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass), for example, now the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, openly described the "arrangement" with the GSEs at a committee hearing on GSE reform in 2003: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping to make housing more affordable . . . a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing." The hint to Fannie and Freddie was obvious: Concentrate on affordable housing and, despite your problems, your congressional support is secure.

In 2005, the Senate Banking Committee, then under Republican control, adopted a strong reform bill, introduced by Republican Sens. Elizabeth Dole, John Sununu and Chuck Hagel, and supported by then chairman Richard Shelby. The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios, and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006. All the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill, and all the Democrats voted against it. Mr. McCain endorsed the legislation in a speech on the Senate floor. Mr. Obama, like all other Democrats, remained silent. [Unable to muster enough Democratic votes for a filibuster-proof majority, the Republicans failed in their effort to get the bill out of the Senate.]

If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge growth in the subprime and Alt-A loan portfolios of Fannie and Freddie could not have occurred, and the scale of the financial meltdown would have been substantially less. The same politicians who today decry the lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped it.

Barney Frank from Massachusetts, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was of critical importance in urging Fannie and Freddie into deeper and deeper risk filled waters. The two senators from Massachusetts Kerry and Kennedy were among those Democrats (including Barack Obama, number 2 on the Fannie/Freddie campaign contributions list) who failed to help the reform legislation pass the Senate and move to the House for possible favorable action and enactment.

OPINION SEPTEMBER 23, 2008

Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess

By CHARLES W. CALOMIRIS and PETER J. WALLISON

Many monumental errors and misjudgments contributed to the acute financial turmoil in which we now find ourselves. Nevertheless, the vast accumulation of toxic mortgage debt that poisoned the global financial system was driven by the aggressive buying of subprime and Alt-A mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The poor choices of these two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) -- and their sponsors in Washington -- are largely to blame for our current mess.

Warnings about the mushrooming problems being created by the unrestrained lending of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were delivered to Congress many times.

Here is a chronology.

The Administration's Unheeded Warnings About The Systemic Risk Posed By The GSEs

For many years, the President and his Administration have not only warned of the systemic consequences of financial turmoil at a housing government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) but also put forward plans to reduce the risk that either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would encounter such difficulties. President Bush publicly called for GSE reform 17 times in 2008 alone before Congress acted. Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded, as the President's repeated attempts to reform the supervision of these entities were thwarted by the legislative maneuvering of those who emphatically denied there were problems. Many prominent Democrats, including House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, opposed any legislation correcting the risks posed by GSEs.

Two different articles appeared over the weekend about how and why the current world financial crisis came about. We touched on this subject several days ago as well, dealing not only with the financial crisis but the self-imposed oil shortfall that is driving up prices of gasoline and heating oil and everything else for average Americans.)

It's simple: It all started with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and loose lending standards to promote home ownership among those who realistically couldn't afford it.

In 2004 and 2005 a major effort backed by President Bush began in the Senate to rein in the two super government sponsored agencies. A reform bill, S. 190, co-sponsored by three senators, including Senator McCain, appeared to be gaining momentum, but then was blocked by Democrats in both the Senate and the House. If that bill had become law, the terrible consequences being experienced today would not have happened.

What a mess.

Oil and gasoline prices are sky high because world oil supply growth is stagnating. The U.S., once the largest producer in the world, is seeing its mature fields fade and its oil reserves decline.

Suddenly, the U.S. financial markets are in free fall. Retirement savings in 401(k)s are vanishing. House values are collapsing. The world worries that the entire financial system will freeze up.

How did this all happen?

Democratic policies are responsible for both crises we face.

Oil blackmail. For decades Democratic Members of Congress, beholden to their extremist environmental backers, have prevented drilling for oil and gas offshore and in the most promising areas of Alaska. Since only recently has technology been developed to extract oil economically from Rocky Mountains shale, that was not included in the annual renewal of the drilling ban, so Colorado Democratic senator Salazar had a separate moratorium slapped on that.

The U.S. has within its land mass and its territorial waters enough untapped oil to make the U.S. totally independent of hostile and unstable oil producers overseas. Yet Democratic policies have made us vulnerable to supply imbalances that drive up oil and gasoline prices to levels the public cannot afford.

When it's finally obvious to all that it's imperative for national energy security as well as fair treatment of the public to drill now, the Democrats still say no, then say, well, maybe as part of a comprehensive plan and then produce sham bills that can't pass and are sure to be vetoed if somehow they get through Congress.

McCain/Palin are for doing all that is possible to increase our energy supplies starting with drilling for oil and gas in an environmentally responsible manner and developing all of the alternative energy sources that make economic sense. But make no mistake about it: Oil will be vital for a long time. Its use will not end in ten years, as Obama predicts. It will still power the world's ships and aircraft for many years to come.

The time to end the Democratic policy against developing our own resources is now.

Unaffordable housing. Democratic pressure to make home ownership available to those who really couldn't afford it built through the years, reaching a crescendo during the Clinton years. The two secondary mortgage market corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were universally considered as having 'implicit' federal guarantees and the debt they issued was rated high accordingly. Their job was to buy mortgage from originators, thus supplying them with fresh money to make new mortgages. More and more Fan and Freddie were pressured to buy loans that originated in subprime, often minority neighborhoods, when in the ordinary course local banks would shun such loans as too risky.

A study done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 1992 suggested that banks were doing "redlining," refusing to make loans in tough, usually minority, neighborhoods. The usual charges of racism and discrimination followed and Fannie and Freddie said they would take such loans on their books. As standards loosened, more and more people bought houses that just a few years earlier they could not buy. Private mortgage buyers competing with Fannie and Freddie had to loosen standards even more to keep the quasi-federal Fannie and Freddie from "creeping" into their business.

President Bush expressed concern several times during his first and second terms and proposed new sweeping regulatory authority over the two agencies, backed by Senator McCain, but Democrats fought the proposals, armies of Fannie and Freddie lobbyists worked over Congress and the President's reform efforts went nowhere. The present chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank brushed off the proposed reforms as totally unnecessary as did the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd and after 2004 so did Barack Obama. Senator McCain was especially prescient in warning in 2005 of the dangers to housing and the economy Fannie and Freddie represented because of their huge size.

It is no surprise that the Dodd and Obama are among the top four recipients of Fannie/Freddie campaign contributions. The top four (John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are the other two) all received more than $100,000. Obama's money total was the most remarkable because he was number two after just a few months in the Senate, while the others had been collecting their loot over years. (Some have suggested that the least Obama can do is give back the $100,000 plus he received from Fannie/Freddie.)

Years of Democratic pressure to make loans easier to get resulted in the greatest homeownership in American history. But in 2006 the new building boom was not finding as many buyers and prices had run up so high for existing homes since everyone could now get a mortgage almost regardless of credit that existing home sales started to slow as well. Furthermore, the looser standards encouraged buyers "to reach," to buy a more expensive house than cash flow would support on a regular mortgage by getting an adjustable or interest only mortgage. As those mortgages started to reset, buyers found themselves unable to make the payments. Since house value increases were slowing, it was no longer possible to refinance with a bigger mortgage using the new money borrowed to pay the bigger mortgage payments.

So when housing slowed, then entered a serious dive it was only a matter of time before the ripples caught up with the secondary market mortgage buyers, from Countrywide Credit up to the biggest of all, Fannie and Freddie. Ironically and sadly, Richard Syron, who was CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston when it issued the "redlining" report that triggered the call for more "realistic, "affordable" and racially blind mortgage lending standards, was at the helm of Freddie when it collapsed and was taken over by the federal government.

The housing values domino was the first to fall, then mortgage defaults escalated and some tranches of mortgage-backed securities sold to buyers around the world fell to zero and world financial panic resulted. No one knew how big the bust was going to be or how long it would last. It's said by some it won't be over until housing values stabilize, which could be in 2009 or later.

This all started with well-meaning but financially disastrous Democratic policies to make it possible for more Americans to own homes. Money flowed into housing like never before from Fannie and Freddie and private mortgage lenders. But the music stopped and there aren't enough chairs to go around.

These crises are still unfolding. The U.S. has gone through difficult times before and has, with strong leadership, come out of them stronger than ever. Senator McCain has correctly said the fundamentals of the economy are strong and expressed optimism that this challenge will be met successfully. Obama, in contrast, said he sees a future America as poorer and meaner than today.

Democratic opposition to drilling and Democratic opposition to tighter lending standards for home mortgages and oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have created these disasters. Yet Obama opposes comprehensive drilling and Obama's campaign advisors include former top officials of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who walked away with tens of millions of dollars of Fannie and Freddie money in severance payments even though they were authors of the failure that taxpayers will now have to pay for.

Reform is desperately needed in Washington, but will be difficult to achieve. McCain and Palin are two tough reformers who have bucked the system. Obama has reformed nothing. McCain and Palin can shake up Washington and will serve the taxpayers, not special interests.

The nation cannot afford a continuation of the disastrous Democratic policies that have already cost Americans billions and will in the end cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps even more.

The financial crisis shaking the world is serious, but the govenment has drawn the line correctly: No bailouts of private companies. The pain of adjustment will be borne by the companies themselves, their creditors and their shareholders, not the taxpayers.

While there was criticism of the federal rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they had to be saved because, uniquely, they carried for decades the "implicit" guaranty of the U.S. government. Based on that assurance, Fannie and Freddie bonds are owned around the globe. Uncle Sam could not walk away.

The implicit guaranty was a bad policy that Congress after Congress left in place, because it made mortgage lending possible to marginal borrowers that otherwise would never take place. Indeed, the recently deposed president of Freddie Mac, the very capable Dick Syron, admitted that they were under constant Democratic pressure from Congress to do even more to help make home ownership possible. Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank was at the forefront pressing such expansiveness on his fellow Massachusetts citizen. (Indeed Frank fattened the recent mortgage bailout bill to include funds for voter registration, knowing that ACORN, chronically involved in vote fraud, would be early in line for the money to register Democrats.)

President Bush several years ago asked Congress to rein in the federally-backed mortgage agencies, but nothing happened. So the house of cards finally collapsed and the taxpayers are picking up the tab.

McCain/Palin's new ad addressses the issue.

Unfortunately, the Democratic desire to make the federal government the mortgage lender of last resort to those who had no assets justifying home ownership has proven very costly to taxpayers. Rational lending standards must be reimposed and Fannie and Freddie must be weaned away from the government's backing. Any question who is more likely to do that, McCain or Obama?

Democrats are working hard to win this November's presidential election, as the old adage says, "by hook or crook." History provides us with key evidence about how the "crook" side of things work in voter registration, so is there any doubt that registration fraud is happening now and will be happening in the run-up to election day?

Democrat candidate Obama is intimately aware of how the system works. During his years as a community organizer and lawyer in Chicago, Obama worked closely with and later represented as a lawyer ACORN, a group dedicated to registering Democratic voters, using whatever it takes, including fraud or, indeed, especially fraud.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal did some investigating and came up with an extraordinary number of fraud cases involving Acorn around the country, including this one from the state of Washington:

But the most interesting news came out of Seattle, where on Thursday local prosecutors indicted seven workers for Acorn, a union-backed activist group that last year registered more than 540,000 low-income and minority voters nationwide and deployed more than 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers. The Acorn defendants stand accused of submitting phony forms in what Secretary of State Sam Reed says is the "worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history" of the state.

The list of "voters" registered in Washington state included former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Tom Friedman, actress Katie Holmes and nonexistent people with nonsensical names such as Stormi Bays and Fruto Boy. The addresses used for the fake names were local homeless shelters. Given that the state doesn't require the showing of any identification before voting, it is entirely possible people could have illegally voted using those names.

Local officials refused to accept the registrations because they had been delivered after last year's Oct. 7 registration deadline. Initially, Acorn officials demanded the registrations be accepted and threatened to sue King County (Seattle) officials if they were tossed out. But just after four Acorn registration workers were indicted in Kansas City, Mo., on similar charges of fraud, the group reversed its position and said the registrations should be rejected. But by then, local election workers had had a reason to carefully scrutinize the forms and uncovered the fraud. Of the 1,805 names submitted by Acorn, only nine have been confirmed as valid, and another 34 are still being investigated. The rest--over 97%--were fake. (emphasis added)