By all means, plug your ears… because Leftists don’t want to hear the truth about the financial crisis they’ve created.

There are no free lunches.

Dems spend the Cold War peace “dividend”… voters reap the jihadi war deficit.

Dems demand banks lend to non-credit worthy loan applicants (read: minorities)… voters eat the financial defaults.

Dems balloon the welfare state… voters pay taxes through the nose.

Republicans look forward to Obama actually debating McCain on these issues. Thus far, Obama prefers to call Palin a pig and incite his thugs to hound the opposition.

Exorteth the One: “I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”

Get in my face? Yep, a bunch of angry Obama cultists and left-wing ACORN drifters are coming to your neighborhoods to accuse you of racism, call you unpatriotic for not bowing down and forking over more taxes to keep the Mother Ship afloat, and check your tire pressure and thermostats while they’re at it. Feel the power of positive change.

In words and actions that would have made his mentor Saul Alinsky proud, Barack Obama is rubbing raw the sores of discontent — and summoning his unhinged flock to do the same. All hail the community-agitator-in-chief. And remember: Lock your doors.

The self-proclaimed angels in Washington will tell you they’ve been working tirelessly to expand the American dream of homeownership by making mortgages available to people unable to plunk down 20 percent on a house. Franklin Raines, the Clinton-appointed former head of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2004, made it his top priority to make mortgages easier to get for people with poor credit, few assets and little money for a down payment.

The fine print to this noble intent was an ill-conceived loosening of standards. For instance, the Clinton administration reinterpreted the Jimmy Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act to politicize lending practices. Under the CRA, the government forced banks to prove they weren’t “redlining” — i.e., discriminating against minorities — by approving loans to minorities and various left-wing “community group” shakedown artists whether they were bad risks or not. (A young Barack Obama got his start with exactly these sorts of groups.) Sen. Phil Gramm called it a vast extortion scheme against America’s banks. Still, the banks were perfectly happy to pass the risky loans to Raines’ Fannie Mae, which was happy to buy them up.

That’s because Raines was transforming Fannie Mae from a boring but stable financial institution dedicated to making homes more affordable into a risky venture that abused its special status as a “Government Sponsored Enterprise” (GSE) for Raines’ personal profit. Fannie bought the bad loans and bundled them together with good ones. Wall Street was glad to buy up these mortgage securities because Fannie Mae was deemed a government-insured behemoth “too big to fail.” And others followed Fannie’s lead.

The current financial crisis stems in large part from the fact that people who shouldn’t have been buying a home, or who bought more home than they could afford, now can’t pay their bills. Their bad mortgages are mixed up with the good mortgages. And thanks in part to new accounting rules set up after Enron, the bad mortgages have contaminated the whole pile, reducing the value of even stable mortgages.

Of course, there are other important factors at work here, having to do with changing technology among other things. And even if the bad mortgages weren’t in the system, we’d still have the hangover from the end of the housing boom. But the financial system could have handled that with the usual corrections. The biggest dose of poison entered the financial bloodstream through Washington. And some people warned us. In 2005, Fannie Mae revealed it overstated earnings by $10.6 billion and that it didn’t really know what was going on. The Bush administration pushed for reforms, but those efforts were rebuffed by Congress, with Democrats Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd taking point, because Fannie and Freddie have spent millions in campaign contributions.

In 2005, McCain sponsored legislation to thwart what he later called “the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole.”

Obama, the Senate’s second-greatest recipient of donations from Fannie and Freddie after Dodd, did nothing.

Meanwhile, Raines, the head of a government-supported institution, made $52 million of his $90 million compensation package thanks in part to fraudulent earnings statements.

But, ah yes, the greedy criminals responsible for this mess must be somewhere on Wall Street.

This point has been made oh so many times…

I felt like I needed to respond to the editorial “Drama of the century: pig lipstick vs. Muslim”. By saying “what was once a meaningful fight for the highest office in the land has turned into a junior high popularity contest”, Mr. Patterson makes it seem like campaigning used to be noble and issue oriented. Are recent campaigns the only ones filled with sleazy personal attacks? I think not. Early presidential campaigns were filled with accusations of illegitimate children, syphilis, mistresses, etc. Abraham Lincoln was called dishonest and illiterate and compared to an ape during his campaign against Douglas. William Henry Harrison was accused of being a drunkard. Thomas Jefferson was called an atheist and a coward during his 1800 campaign against John Adams. Jefferson’s men countered by labeling Adams a criminal and a tyrant. John Quincy Adams was called a “pimp” in the 1828 campaign, and Andrew Jackson’s wife was accused of being a slut. Obviously, we would all like campaigns to be more issue oriented, but sensationalized personal attacks are nothing new to politics.

“Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq alone”

Sad and tragic, but then 1,000 U.S. soldiers died one day in a training accident preparing for the D-Day invasion.

Nothing like D-Day will ever be possible again - the New York Times would publish an advance schedule, because the public has a right to know.

I’ll take pig lipstick over a Muslim any day.

“I’ll take pig lipstick over a Muslim any day.”

It’s nice to know there’s still a KKK contingent here. We don’t want to get complacent with all the racists around.

To the author of 10:22

I wish you would not hide behind the anonymous tag, because you should be recognized for your intellect and obviously valuable insight on the situation in the financial markets

Bravo

“It’s nice to know there’s still a KKK contingent here. We don’t want to get complacent with all the racists around.”

Actually, I’m Filipino. You, my friend, are living proof that liberals are oh so out of touch with reality. No wonder that few rational people listen to your ilk any more.

idiotarian @ 8:37pm whined: “I wish you would not hide behind the anonymous tag”

How dreary — to be — Somebody! How public — like a Frog — To tell one’s name — the livelong June — To an admiring Bog!

— Emily Dickinson