Fannie-Freddie fiasco is Dems' baby

Cut through the doubletalk that obscures the financial mess in Washington and on Wall Street, and these points are obvious to everyone paying attention: • Congress used the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to force banks to make risky loans to "help" people buy houses they could not afford.

• As early as 2001, President Bush and Republicans warned that Freddie and Fannie's financial house was unstable and could wreak havoc on the economy.

• Fannie and Freddie spent more than $200 million lobbying Congress to ignore the problem.

• Subservient Democrats, like Barney Frank, dutifully declared that Freddie and Fannie were safe and sound and blocked reform.

Now, no one can dispute that Freddie and Fannie were certainly unsound. So, who pays for Congress' failure to reform? Taxpayers, of course: up to $4 trillion in lost savings and investments plus more than $1 trillion in new government debt.

Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want us to believe that the financial fiasco is the fault of deregulation. Poppycock.

In 1999, before George W. Bush took office, the New York Times' Steven Holmes reported that the Clinton administration was pressuring Fannie Mae to expand mortgage loans to "people with less-than-stellar credit ratings." Through CRA, banks were strong-armed to make risky loans and threatened with fines of up to $500,000 per violation if they didn't reach government quotas. Banks were encouraged to hire "community groups," like ACORN, to find "qualified" borrowers.

Not surprisingly, when banks were offered the chance to dump those risky loans on Fannie and Freddie, they jumped at the chance.

Holmes reported, in 1999: "Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times (but) . . . may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s."

In 2001, the Bush administration warned of "strong repercussions in the financial markets" if Fannie and Freddie encountered financial trouble. Treasury Secretary John Snow repeatedly warned that federal regulators didn't have enough authority to properly supervise Fannie and Freddie.

As recently as August 2007, President Bush urged Congress "to get them reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused."

Democrats ignored those warnings:

Rep. Barney Frank said he did not want to "focus on safety and soundness . . . . I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing."

Rep. Maxine Waters claimed, "We do not have a crisis . . . Everything (in CRA) has worked just fine."

And Sen. Christopher Dodd, No. 1 recipient of Fannie and Freddie campaign cash, called them "great success stories."

Fannie and Freddie spent more than $200 million and employed over 140 lobbyists to avoid just the kind of scrutiny that Republicans urged. They throw around millions in campaign contributions, targeting key members of Senate and House finance and banking committees.

Ironically, Barack Obama doesn't sit on those committees, yet he ranks as the No. 2 recipient of Freddie and Fannie campaign cash after just four years in the Senate.

Last week, Associated Press reported that three years ago Freddie Mac even paid a consulting firm peel off enough GOP votes to kill a reform bill sponsored by Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel.

"What we're dealing with is an astounding failure of management" that was "driven clearly by self interest and greed," Hagel said.

With unanimous Republican support, Hagel's reform bill sailed through committee, but Freddie's lobbying fusillade found enough weak-kneed Republicans to help its loyal Democrats derail the bill.

Three years later, we cannot know if reforms proposed by Bush, Snow and Hagel would have averted the current crisis, but we certainly know that Fannie and Freddie's Democrat defenders were dead wrong.

Given Democrats' complicity in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, it is utterly astounding that confused voters could actually reward them on Election Day.

Mark Hillman of Burlington, Colorado, served as Senate Majority Leader and State Treasurer. He is now Republican National Committeeman for the state. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com.

Dare you to see 'American Carol'

No, it's not a dream. Hollywood really has released a feature film -- no mere documentary, an in-joke you'll appreciate after seeing this piece of work -- that hoses down with merciless ridicule such richly deserving targets as... Hollywood itself, the ACLU, leftist universities and their perpetually juvenile faculties, radical Islam, the anti-war movement, Obama's negotiation fetish, the demonizing of Christians, gun control, gay rights, Katrina guilt, Cuban health care, wimpy Democrats claiming to revere the macho JFK, slavery, handicapped kids (okay, maybe not all the targets are deserving, but this is a David Zucker movie after all), Michael Moore in love with himself, Rosie O'Donnell confronting Bill O'Reilly, and Leslie Nielsen as a dirty old man.

It's all jammed into, and spilling out around the edges of (like our favorite radical documentarian overflowing a theater seat), "An American Carol," now in theaters.

Watching the slovenly, America-hating Moore, or "Michael Malone" as the Kevin Farley character is called, get figuratively and literally slapped around for 110 minutes in this campy tribute to Dickens' "Christmas Carol" will do your heart good, especially amidst the headlines about Obama's soaring polls and Oliver Stone's propaganda slam against McCain's predecessor, "W."

There was no doubt Zucker has delivered slapstick as I lost count of the stinging red handprints on Farley's pudgy, stubbled cheek.

Granted, "American Carol" is not in the league with "Airplane!" as a truly zany and outrageous comedy trip from Nielsen and Zucker. This is no cinema jetliner -- it's more of a rubber-band-powered balsa wood job with more chuckles than belly laughs.

But to have Tinseltown heap mockery on liberalism, for once, is so amazing as to qualify with Dr. Johnson's comment about a dog walking on its hind legs: Never mind if it's really done well, you just marvel that it's done at all.

If you're on the right, see the movie and salve your soul. Ten bucks (including maybe a small popcorn, maybe not) were never better spent.

If you're on the left and man enough, take my dare and endure two hours in the George Patton (Kelsey Grammer) and George Washington (Jon Voight) reeducation camp for woolly-headed utopians.

If you're in the center, give "Carol" a try just for the fun of it. I promise you'll never waste time or money on another Michael Moore celluloid abomination.

Disgustingly cheerful, still

Time for another few thoughts of glee. It has been a beautiful morning. I want to sing along with the cast of Oklahoma! My permasmile turned on full blast, I will never turn it off. (Unless the batteries run out) 1. McCain proceeds unto his doom, doom. Two more weeks of impending doom.

2. Likewise the GOP. It now abides in rigor mortis while preparing for actual decomposition.

3. What shall it fertilize?

4. McCain's loss must not be blamed on Palin. Keep an eye out for those who will attempt such.

5. Does anyone now know what "Conservatism" means? Well... How'd things slip away? Perhaps Neoconservatism has proved fatal to Conservatism.

6. Christopher Buckley has just been purged from National Review. Thus enhancing NR's irrelevance.

7. Not that Christopher didn't deserve it, after endorsing Obama and all.

8. Buckley Junior recently wrote: "Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance."

9. Ouch. WFB couldn't have said it better himself. And he surely would have tried.

10. Interesting question: If WFB had supported Buchanan in 92 and 96, where would the conservative movement be today? And the nation?

11. Colin Powell endorses Obama at a key juncture. Why? Powell will forever seethe over his February 2003 UN speech which started the Iraq War. A bold betrayal written for him by key Neocons: Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, John Hannah, William Luti. Powell had deep misgivings beforehand, but ultimately decided to "trust" and do his "duty." Turned out the whole heap of "evidence" was false. Whoops on all counts.

12. As for the markets... There are no guides for the road ahead. No signs, no taillights. Maybe even no pavement. Hence Norman's permasmile!

Well chaps, so much for today's inspiration. Remember, the thoughts make the man -- Let us keep on the sunny side!

Respectfully Yours, Norman Vincent Peale

==================================

But Dave Crater begs to differ...

Norman, Norman. Sigh. Your basic instincts have always been good, but you continue to disappoint in some aspects of your conscious judgment. When you are slightly to the left of Colin Powell on national security, perhaps second thoughts are in order. And when glee is your reaction at the demise of the world's strongest conservative party, perhaps third and fourth thoughts are in order.

4. Agreed. Many will dish blame everywhere but where it belongs, including Palin and other Christian social conservatives. One can hear it now: "the GOP needs to abandon these social cavemen that are holding it back and focus on issues that Americans really care about" blah blah blah.

5. Perhaps the failure to observe and follow conservatism, particularly by "conservative" intellectuals like Peale or Christopher Buckley, and by actual policy makers like GWB and John McCain, has been fatal to conservatism.

6-9. Quoting as authority on conservatism someone who has endorsed Obama -as I say, poor judgment, Amigo.

Reach him at crater@wilberforcecenter.org

Intimidation by ObamaNation

Barack Obama says Republicans "are going to try to make you afraid of me." Well, it's hard to imagine how the GOP could conjure up a more fearsome specter of an Obama presidency than the one created by the tactics of his own campaign. Responding to those who dare commit blasphemy against The One, Obama's campaign has unleashed lawsuits and urged prosecution by no less than the Justice Department, enlisted elected officials to threaten and intimidate his foes, and deployed its vast internet e-mail list to silence bloggers and radio talk shows.

In Missouri, Obama allies, from a U.S. Senator to a local sheriff, threatened criminal proceedings against television stations that air anti-Obama commercials. Such "police state tactics" prompted Gov. Matt Blunt to charge Obama's campaign with "abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism."

ObamaNation used the same strategy against the National Rifle Association when its political fund released ads to educate gun owners about Obama's hostile record. Bob Bauer, attorney for the Obama campaign, urged cable and television stations in Pennsylvania to "immediately cease" airing the NRA's ads, because the campaign determined they were "false, misleading and deceptive."

Well.

Similarly, Bauer pressured the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute the non-profit American Issues Project and one of its donors over an advertising campaign that exposed Obama's alliances with domestic terrorist-turned-university professor William Ayers who has reflected, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough."

The Obama campaign also dispatched its thought police to silence the free speech rights of opponents on radio and internet.

First aimed at internet blogs supporting Hillary Clinton, Obama supporters swamp certain unfriendly blogs with "spam" complaints. When those complaints reach a threshold, Google's Blogger platform renders the blog inoperable. Bloggers must then wait for Google to make an individual determination whether or not each accused blog is legitimate.

A more sinister intimidation befell journalists probing Obama's background in Chicago politics, as well as radio stations that provided a platform for those reports. The Chicago Tribune reported that Obama's campaign used its database "listing contact information for millions of people" not only for raising money but "to beat back media messages it does not like."

Milt Rosenberg, a longtime talk show host on Chicago's WGN radio interviewed two prominent Obama critics, author David Freddoso and professor Stanley Kurtz. Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama is a best-seller that unflatteringly examines Obama's career, while Kurtz fought the University of Illinois to gain access to files documenting activities involving Obama and Ayers.

In both cases, Rosenberg specifically invited Obama's campaign to participate. Obama's camp not only refused, but it dispatched an e-mail alert instructing compliant Obamabots to bombard the radio switchboard and e-mail in order to fill the lines with scripted callers and block out other voices.

Even liberal commentator Andrew Sullivan called the Obama tactics "a disgraceful attempt to intimidate journalists trying to get at the facts."

If other slimy strategies fail, Obama critics are subjected to the nuclear option - the race card - often by a reliably hypersensitive, sycophantic media.

Associated Press "analyst" Douglass Daniel tied himself in knots explaining how Sarah Palin's comment about Obama "palling around" with terrorists - again referring to Ayers and his wife, both of whom are white - "carried a racially tinged subtext."

Remember, too, the supposed racial overtones ascribed to McCain's ad comparing the accomplishment-free Obama to similarly-credentialed starlets Paris Hilton and Britney Spears - again, both white.

Mentioning Obama's accounts of his own use of marijuana or cocaine is off limits because that's racist, too. And, of course, to vote for someone other than Obama is the telltale sign of racism.

If this is the treatment Obama's critics receive now - when he's merely a freshman senator from Illinois - there's plenty to fear from an Obama presidency.

Bunyan replies to Peale

Editor: Answering Dose 1 below, Crater signed this one John Bunyan, identifying with the author of "Pilgrim's Progress." Dave Crater writes:

Interesting you should take Dr. Peale as your namesake - there is the "power of positive thinking" irony in your note of course, but more substantively there is the hollowing out of Christian faith in the 20th century in which Dr. Peale was at the center.

It is that hollowing out which has been bearing bitter fruits like our current ones for about a century now - where faith in God becomes merely "positive thinking," belief in free markets and property rights becomes merely welfare state "capitalism;" where a government that tries to play God then plays the savior from the economic disasters it causes; where economic and financial understanding becomes merely "monetarism" or "Keynesianism" or, as Larry Kudlow wrote this morning, "we need government to act in order to fix the free market"; where genuine compassion and private generosity become merely taxation and wealth redistribution; where personal responsibility and moral hazard get pushed off to a later date when we've solved the latest crisis caused by the dearth of those very values; when political statesmanship becomes merely Barney Frank; and where republicanism and Republicanism become merely John McCain.

We'll never get the politics right until we get right who God is - hint: He's not in Washington - but from a political standpoint, "neoconservatism," a modern incarnation of the classical principles of conservative thought, has been more observed by the Bush administration in passing and in the breach than in the observance. It is the answer, not the problem.

Responses to your notes:

1. Agreed. The race is over.

2. Ditto. Perhaps now we can stop the empty cheerleading among the GOP political classes? McCain is pathetic - there is no other word for it.

3. GWB as right as ever on Iraq and history will remember him so. GWB as wrong as Hoover on financial crisis, what causes it, what fixes it, and what economic leadership is, and history will remember his $700 billion bailout as simply another weak capitulation to 20th-century statism.

4. GWB indeed a shell - the kind of shell that has taken a steady beating for doing what is right (Iraq), then instead of permanently choosing the right side of the street and building on this foreign policy conservatism a coherent and courageous set of socially and economically conservative initiatives, a la Reagan building himself and the nation a genuine legacy in exchange for the unavoidable public relations beating in the media, he routinely sells out to welfare state expansion and economic statism, trying like McCain to drive in the middle of the street and getting himself hit by traffic going in both directions. He, the nation, and the GOP have suffered inordinately as a result.

5. Agreed, though few will understand where they actually went wrong. See aforementioned dearth of economic understanding rooted in dearth of spiritual understanding.

6. Those who maintain traditional Christian faith sleep peacefully amidst the confusion, for the Almighty is still in His temple. Psalm 2 comes to mind: "Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing?"

7. We should align with traditional (i.e., true) faith and classical (i.e., true) political conservatism. That means no more John McCains, Bob Doles, or Gerald Fords - how much mediocrity do we have to endure before we recognize what it looks like?

8. "A bit more deflation"? Deflation ended 5 years ago. Commodities are at twice their historic levels - we are well into a period of inflation.