Won't Get Fooled Again? You Get Fooled Daily

I've been doing a little bloggy house cleaning and ran across this old stuff - you want it? If not, maybe you can pass it along to someone who will,...

[Click to enlarge.]

"Sen. John McCain's 2006 demand for regulatory action on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have prevented current financial crisis, as HUMAN EVENTS learned from the letter shown in full text above.



McCain's letter -- signed by nineteen other senators -- said that it was '...vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]...operate in a safe and sound manner.[and]..More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event that either...should fail.'



Sen. Obama did not sign the letter, nor did any other Democrat."

-- Human Events

Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac's Hack

At the October 7 Presidential debate, John McCain said that Barack Obama had encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make risky loans, and that Mr. Obama was the second largest recipient of campaign cash from the government mortgage giants.

Mr. Obama replied that he "never promoted Fannie Mae" and that "two years ago I said that we've got a subprime lending crisis that has to be dealt with." And that's not all. "I wrote to Secretary Paulson, I wrote to Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and told them this is something we have to deal with, and nobody did anything about it," said the Illinois Senator.

There's more. Mr. Obama's March 2007 letter included a stirring call to "assess options" and boldly suggested that the two men "facilitate a serious conversation" about housing. He was even brave enough to suggest that "the relevant private sector entities and regulators" might be able to provide "targeted responses." Then in paragraph four, the Harvard-trained lawyer dropped his bombshell: a suggestion that various interest groups get together to "consider" best practices in mortgage lending.

Some may find it hard to believe that Mr. Obama had nothing to show for this herculean effort to shake up Washington. They may be shocked as well that such passionate language didn't move the Fed and Treasury to action. For our part, we note that nowhere in his letter did Mr. Obama suggest that the government should stop subsidizing loans to people who can't repay them.

— The Editors, showing (once again) Barack Obama is a liar, in the Wall Street Journal

A politician lying his way to the White House has nothing to do with "a new kind of politics" nor does it have anything to do with:

The Macho Response: Orson Scott Card - A Reporter Who Speaks Truth To The Media

"Let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?


You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city."

— Orson Scott Card, a courageous Democrat and newspaper columnist, telling it exactly as it is, at the Meridian.

John McCain's Fannie And Freddie Letter

[Click to enlarge.]

"Sen. John McCain's 2006 demand for regulatory action on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have prevented current financial crisis, as HUMAN EVENTS learned from the letter shown in full text below.



McCain's letter -- signed by nineteen other senators -- said that it was '...vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]...operate in a safe and sound manner.[and]..More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event that either...should fail.'



Sen. Obama did not sign the letter, nor did any other Democrat."

-- Human Events

Fannie And Freddie = Barack And Dems

Our Little Press Problem (Ain't So Little After All)

"Yes, they don't just cover for each other, they actually sleep together: David Gregory and BETH WILKINSON. Wilkinson served as the bankrupt Fannie Mae's executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary from February 2006 until just a few days ago when things got too ugly.

Beth Wilkinson and her lefty hubby, NBC's David Gregory. Yep, you can really tell they're looking out for you and all the little people. Don't they just look like they deserve to be bailed out by that tax paying pig farmer from Nebraska?

But don't worry, because David Gregory would never go on the air to report about this crisis without a disclaimer about his wife's role...oh wait....yes he would. and Oh yeah, financial records indicate that Beth Wilkinson has contributed $4,600 to Obama’s presidential campaign."

-- Neocon Express, ever-so-accurately describing the disaster American journalism has become and why.

John McCain Told Them (Bill Clinton Says So)

Fact Check: Did McCain warn about Fannie, Freddie 2 years ago?

The Statement: A television ad titled "Rein," released Tuesday, September 30 by Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, repeats a claim McCain has made repeatedly on the campaign trail — that he called for more oversight of lending institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "John McCain fought to rein in Fannie and Freddie," the ad's narrators says, before citing media reports on McCain's efforts.

Get the facts!

The Facts: In May 2006, McCain was speaking on the Senate floor in support of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Act of 2005, a plan he had co-sponsored. In the speech, he cited a federal report, saying that "Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets." He also noted a $3.8 million fine Freddie Mac had recently paid to the Federal Elections Commission over problems with disclosure of its political lobbying.

"These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform," McCain said in the speech. He urged senators to support changing how the institutions were overseen by the government. "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole," McCain said in the speech.

The legislation, which never became law, would have moved oversight of Fannie and Freddie from the department of Housing and Urban Development to an independent Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Agency.

The Verdict: True. While it's impossible to know what the impact of his legislation would have been, the ad accurately describes McCain's stance and comments.

-- CNN Politics.com.

I Didn't Do It (The Democrats Did)

"There are two essential problems with [the bailout] analysis: it is factually false and morally unwise.

Rep. Barney Frank was elected by a majority of the people of his district in Massachusetts. Senator Chris Dodd is brought to us by many but not all of the voters of Connecticut. And so on. Most of us never had the chance to vote for or against these solons. So why should we be blamed?

The regulatory changes that led us to this point were the work of lobbyists, bureaucrats and lawmakers including Dodd and Frank and corrupt executives, like Raines and Johnson. We know or can know their names.

The idea of blaming 'all of us' is a way to avoid blaming those who did the deeds and reaped their ill-gotten gains.

What about cheap mortgages? Sure, some of us took them when they were offered. But who offered them and why? Yes, it is the Clinton-era changes to the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to lend more for “affordable housing.” Law firms, including ones connected to Obama, sued banks that failed to meet their low-income quotas for mortgages. Bankers were not driven by greed, as everyone says, but by fear. Fear of the baying hounds of regulators and lawyers would call them racist and ruin their careers. But who unleashed the hounds on the bankers?"

-- Richard Miniter, saying what I've already been saying, but for Pajamas Media.

The bailout just failed, kids, so it's clear the Democrats aren't as politically powerful as they think. (Their own guys had to turn on them for this not to happen.) Now we get to see if who's to blame for our financial security gets noticed. Time's on the side of the Republicans now:

The Dems are in trouble.

Don't Know Much About His-to-ry,...

Don't Know Much About His-to-ry II is here.