The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain-- which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years-- including the present year-- denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.
The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.
But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.
Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.
The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.
But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.
- Thomas Sowell
Also, don't miss this film:
This very evening, I found myself in the house of a client of mine and a newsflash came up. It was the news broadcast from the VRT, the Flemish Radio and Television, which is supposed to take a neutral stance since it is funded with taxpayer money, amongst others from yours truly. They were as usual openly rooting for Obama, blasting Sarah Palin for attacking the Democratic hopeful for his ties to terrorists. They then explained in one sentence who Ayers was, adding that Obama, at the time of Ayers' terrorist acts, was just 8.
And that was that. The gullible viewer was supposed to assume that, because Obama was 8 when the Pentagon was attacked, there coule never have been a link between Ayers and Obama. In the same manner one could argue that Mohammed Atta could never have been inspired by the Phropet Mohammed because at the time that the latter murdered the Jews of Khaybar, Atta was minus 1339. F*cking BRIL-LI-ANT!!!
Only it isn't brilliant. It's cheap demagogy. I know that with regards to the subprime crisis and the catastrophic aftermath we have sailed in, there's plenty of blame to go around. But to any level-headed, objective observer it's clear who should get the tar and feathers treatment. Over here... NOTHING of substance is heard about the way in which Clinton amended the CRA so that banks faced fines if they did not issue loans to people who should never have gotten them in the first place, about how Barney Frank insisted all was right with the GSE's when it was clear they were heading towards the abyss, how Raines made millions of dollars after mismanaging Fannie Mae...
... nothing.
Thanks to the Internet I am swimming in an information pool. And while that is a good thing, it's at the same time scary. It is scary because all around me, I see people being lied to. Lied to on a massive scale. Being spoonfed tailored bits and pieces of information. And they are swallowing it. How else do you explain Obama is presidential choice no. 1 in 16 out of 17 countries?
Stop Barack Obama. GET. OUT. THE. VOTE.
MFBB.
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