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September 27, 2008
Bailout Mess: And you wonder why I'm not a Democrat...
Posted by: Kevin
As soon as I turned on the television and saw the live news conference on Thursday, I could tell what was happening. Barney was talking, and it was classic Barney.
We all know that the White House is getting solidly behind their man -- Henry Paulson -- in pushing the mega-bailout as the solution to the current crisis. It's also not surprising that the Senate Republicans would fall in line behind something gigantic and incomprehensible in times of panic. And when John McCain had announced he was suspending his campaign to go to Washington to get into the middle of the push and pull over the crisis, the Democrats understood that they were not going to have their way in a walk - they would be matched stunt for stunt.
And when I heard Barney Frank dismissively joking about the coming White House meeting being unnecessary, that it was all solved, and perhaps the bill would be passed in moments, I smelled a rat. It's from knowing Barney for many years. And the fact that Barney, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Barack Obama all spoke off the same talking points for the next 24 hours simply confirmed it.
The "deal" was a stunt, no less than, perhaps, McCain's return to the Capitol. McCain was simply being outflanked by a gang of guys who cheerleaded subprime mortgages in the 1990s and took buckets of money from the very companies that are crashing the system today. And a hapless Obama grimaced and chewed on ice cubes in frustration because yet again, his biblical narrative was being interrupted by reality. He looked small in the midst of it, out of his league. (In the debate last night, he defended the bailout and spoke against a spending freeze ... because he wants "to fund early childhood education"? Huh??)
The New York Times today tells the real story of what was going on among House members in those critical hours, and now it's widely known that in the rush to jam the mega-bailout through to approval, Americans have been swamping Congressional offices with angry calls in opposition to it. And now that press conference on Thursday shines through as a classic Barney Frank stunt. Now, I'm not saying stunts aren't part of the whole game, here. Nor am I disparaging Barney. It would be like smacking a dog because he barked - he's a politician. But this whole week in Washington draws the bright line between the Democrats, the now-comatose White House and what's left of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill.
And you wonder why I'm not a Democrat. You wonder why I won't overlook everything that happened this week and vote for Democrats because of some stupid hate crimes bill or what have you. And I guess my utter disgust at what the Democrats (and plenty of brain-dead Republicans) did this week on the financial crisis is just rooted in me being self-loathing or whatever. Yeah, right.
I won't overlook Trent Lott-style gay-bashing any more than I can overlook the unbelievably hypocritical, self-serving and reprehensible way the Democrats (and some incompetent Republicans) have been handling this entire issue since the 1990s.
And you wonder why I'm undecided in this race.
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Comments
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And by reprehensible, I mean partisan Democrats who will stoop to Free-Republic, extremist-right Republican depths to back their party no matter what the consequences. Take that any way you like.
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(almost as reprehensible as my need of a copy editor, but i digress)
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Kevin, no one here "wonders why you're not a Democrat."
Your partisan bias in favor of anything Republic is transparent to even the most ignorant reader.
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Kev:
You're right. Let's all vote for McCain and if we're lucky his melanoma will metastasize quickly and Sarah Palin can be sworn in to fix things up.
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I agree, Chris... What to do, what do to?
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I largely agree but would be more even-handed about it.
The CRA is what you indirectly refer to in your link. It is NOT a primary cause for the present crisis. (CRA does not explain why 2/3rds of mortgages originated between 2004 and 2007 are expected to end in default, Kevin; there aren't that many minorities in the entire country.) But it has contributed. But that didn't stop Bush from trumpeting historic home ownership statistics in his 2004 re-election bid.
CRA reminds me of other mechanisms, like race quotas for school admissions, that focus on forcing specific results rather than the causes of results (or even accepting the fact that a specific result may be wrong).
That said, a GOP more worried about "the folks" and not Wall Street would have focused on alternative mechanisms such as computerized evaluation of mortgage applications that could blindly score applicants, leaving CRA to focus only on minorities who "pass" the computer scoring but "fail" the bank's approval (the implication being that race was the or a factor). That would at least have put into stark relief the choice of race-neutral lending versus "quota" lending.
Wouldn't it be nice if either party was actually focused on typical citizens and not "taxpayers" or "business" or "activists"? That would mean less emphasis (and tax breaks) on home owners and more focus (and spending) on rental housing. Can Americans accept limits to their traditional obsession with owning their own home?
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RIDICULOUS!!!
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Sorry Kevin, I really try to ignore your posting, really I do.
...And you wonder why I'm undecided in this race...
You’re undecided because you can’t make up your mind as to what your priorities are. You want it all. You want to being Johnny Queer on the street corner and you want to be a middle class housewife living in the ‘burbs wondering when the “colored folks” are going to break down the front door.
Earlier you couldn’t(wouldn’t) commit to the Democratic Party because it was “rigged” in favor of Hillary and when that didn’t happen you dreamed up another excuse.What ever is wrong with the left side of McCain’s face is eventually going to exploded, he going to fall face down on a stage due to a heart attack. Palin will discover she’s pregnant again.
And there’s Kev in the middle of it, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic so you can get a better look at this “rumored” iceberg.
I wish you lots of luck, you’re going to need it.
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There is something sinister going on in this country being orchastrated by the Far left.
There are two stories on different sites that must be read. They are each about different things but they both intersect with ACORN and Obama.
From American Thinker, an article about how the Left has a strategy of using any means to collapse American capitalism
Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis
From the PUMA blog No Quarter, an analysis of how Obama and ACORN are in cohoots with one another to achieve their common goals.
Consumer Rights League, Obama, ACORN and The SubPrime Mortgage »
Everyone must contact your Congressman and be AGAINST the bailout.
The enemies of this country are rushing to have the bailout pass Congress ASAP.
For that reason alone it should be stopped. Plus dont you find it odd how Nancy Pelosi is requiring 100 GOP congressmen to support the Bailout or else she won't pass it?
She's looking for cover. She knows something horrible is in that bill and she wants to be able to deflect the coming criticism when it is exposed.
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Such weird turnaround from the Republicans to blame the Democrats for free wheeling business practices of Wall Street!
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I could care less if you're a Democrat or not. If you vote for McCain, particularly in view of Moose Woman and his fragile health, you are a traitor to the country. And an idiot.
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This little act of appearing undecided is getting tiresome.
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I'm just glad Paulson didn't get down on one knee in front of Barney Frank like he did with Pelosi.
That would have been too high a price to pay.
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Wow, VinceP1974, it appears your tinfoil hat is so tightly wrapped that your brain isn't getting any oxygen.
Even Michelle Fucking Malkin tells her fascist fan club to ignore anything posted at No Quarter.
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(CRA does not explain why 2/3rds of mortgages originated between 2004 and 2007 are expected to end in default, Kevin; there aren't that many minorities in the entire country.)
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.
However.....
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.''
Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, both of whom were the recipients of considerable largesse from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac themselves, vehemently denied that there was anything wrong with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encouraging and purchasing vast and overwhelming quantities of hideous loans.
Or this, from 2005.
Of course, the Obama campaign rewarded these people by giving them jobs as advisors and Vice-Presidential vetters.
Just as Obama rewarded a person who made what he calls predatory loans and who robbed people of their savings by making her his National Finance Chair.
In short, you have Republicans pushing for MORE regulation of the main entities that touched off this whole fiasco -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose reckless behavior, accounting fraud, and similar activities were not only mandated by congressional Democrats like Obama, but were protected by them in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars of lobbying money.
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Oh, and here's another one.
You know, ACORN.....that group which has also been linked to voter fraud in multiple states, which Barack Obama is illegally funding, and which, under the Democrat plan, is supposed to get a cut of the profits from the sale of each asset that the government takes over.
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I am disgusted. I am sick with media and the see saw postion on the bail out. The bail out is only for wall street not main street and every word that comes out of the government is bogus
The comments to this entry are closed.
Allan on Sep 27, 2008 12:25:02 PM:
By "some incompetant (sic) Republicans" I trust you mean Phil Gramm, McCain's principal economic advisor and the driver of the deregulation of energy and financial markets? And George W. Bush? And John McCain, who votes with Bush 90% of the time?