The Bailout and the TARP and the Stimulus and the Multi-Trillion Budget and TARP 2 and Stimulus 2 and TARP And Stimulus Meet Frankenstein and the Wolf Man are like the old Saturday-morning cliffhanger serials your grandpa used to enjoy. But now he doesn’t have to grab his walker and totter down to the Rialto, because he can just switch on the news and every week there’s his plucky little hero Big Government facing the same old crisis: Why, there’s yet another exciting spending bill with twelve zeroes on the end, but unfortunately there seems to be some question about whether they have the votes to pass it. Oh, no! And then, just as the fate of another gazillion dollars of pork and waste hangs in the balance, Arlen Specter or one of those lady-senators from Maine dashes to the cliff edge and gives a helping hand, and phew, this week’s spendapalooza sails through. But don’t worry, there’ll be another exciting episode of Trillion-Buck Rogers of the 21st Century next week!

This is the biggest generational transfer of wealth in the history of the world. If you’re an 18-year old middle-class hopeychanger, look at the way your parents and grandparents live: It’s not going to be like that for you. You’re going to have a smaller house, and a smaller car — if not a basement flat and a bus ticket. You didn’t get us into this catastrophe. But you’re going to be stuck with the tab, just like the Germans got stuck with paying reparations for the catastrophe of the First World War. True, the Germans were actually in the war, whereas in the current crisis you guys were just goofing around at school, dozing through Diversity Studies and hoping to ace Anger Management class. But tough. That’s the way it goes.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of this gigantic multi-generational wealth transfer, borrowing money as we are from people too young to enter into a legal contract, without getting their consent (which some of them aren’t old enough to give in any case).

When I point out to young people of my acquaintance how grateful I am for their volunteering to support me in style during my retirement, with benefits they won’t be able to afford for themselves, the conservatives among them are likely to say, “But I didn’t vote for Obama!”

Tough beans, kids.  The same standard that applied to us now applies to you.  It happened on your watch.  I don’t care merely whom you voted for.  I care as much whom you really, strongly advocated for.  Did you accept half-baked post-modern arguments from your friends who voted for Obama?    Did you let them get away with claiming that Obama’s policies might reduce abortion (even though he’s the most radically pro-abortion president we have had), or make the world safer for freedom loving people (how many “peace studies” students voted for Obama?), or “save the poor” in our troubled economy, or improve the environment and save us from global warming, or???

I have a simple observation:  even conservative young people seem unwilling, or unable, to strongly make the positive cases for the legal protection of life, capitalism, freedom, less intrusive government, etc.  I suppose you can blame the older folks for not teaching you how.  On the other hand, some of us blame you for being very slow learners.  You’re old enough to have chosen, and you chose to “get along” with your left-leaning Christian friends more than you chose to challenge them, in way too many cases.   Way too many Evangelical Christian young adults voted for Obama.  Way too many more who didn’t vote for him seem to have been shy about sharing their opinions.  It seems that in this post-modern age, it is somehow gauche to clearly state your opinions, along with the facts, historical context and logic that underlies them.

I know, many post-modern young adult Christians say something like, “It’s about relationship, not about being right.”  And they use this line to justify not strongly arguing their perspective when it really needs to be done.  That’s fabulous.  But what it’s going to mean is that the “relationship” you will have to my generation is that we’ll think we have a “right” to a big fat check from you, every month.  Since you’re having babies at a slower rate than we did, there are going to be a LOT less young folk for you to pass the burden on to, when you want to retire.  But that’s your problem.  Somehow, I have the feeling that in about 40-50 years, when it’s time for you to collect from the younger generation, the new version of “hope and change” will be, “Let the geezers take care of themselves.”  Which just means that they’ll be smarter than you were at the same age.  You’ll have cooperated in making sure your generation gets the shaft both from the one older than it (mine, which you will be supporting), and the one younger than it (which is likely not to want to support you).

There really aren’t “two reasonable sides” to some of these debates, despite the post-modern tendency to reject any strong claim of truth, and to find it offensive when other people claim to be “right” about something.   Do the reading.  Read the blogs and foundation/think-tanks linked at this site, regularly, for a matter of months.  Especially the Claremont Institute, the Hoover Institution, CATO, FEE (Foundation for Economic Education), Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, Townhall.com, PajamasTV, Moral Accountability, and so on.  Find out what’s really going on in the world.  There is a side based on “hope and change” and very few facts, and fewer coherent theories to connect them, and there is a side based on an understanding of the human condition, how incentives work, and the facts of natural moral law.

You can link up with fellow young conservatives and libertarians on Twitter, on Facebook, and lots of other places accessible from the blogs and thinktanks listed here.  Get on their daily email lists.  Get yourself educated.  Learn to make the case convincingly, and then have the guts to do it within your social group.  Along the way, you may make some enemies.   That may bother you.  It may feel “unChristian” or something.  But better to have a few enemies than friends who steal you blind.  Talk about “unChristian.”

Suck it up.  It’s not too late.  Start NOW educating those around you, especially the lefties and mushy middles, the ones of your cohort who, well-meaning, are simply fooled by nice sounding platitudes on the Left.  Help them to understand that if they don’t quickly help to reverse the current Democrat majority in Congress, in the upcoming 2010 elections, then they will pay, and pay, and pay, in blood and treasure.

And worse, they still won’t get what they now think they’ll be paying for, because there will still be poverty, people getting inadequate medical care, and kids getting poor educations.   And the world “out there” will be an even more dangerous place, for them and their children.

And, of course, you and your kids will also have to become awesome bicycle mechanics.  So you can come visit me at my retirement villa, I mean, since you won’t be able to afford gas.  I’ll be waiting on the golf course.  That hip replacement you will buy for me will be just perfect.  And I didn’t even have to touch my savings.  Thanks.  Really, I mean it.

This is the campaign to defeat Obama, in a nutshell.

I watched them all.  Obama supporters may complain about interpretations, but these videos do not have a factual error I can see.  They’re quite concise, delivered engagingly, and make their point very clearly.

The McCain campaign should take a lesson from these people.

Either Republican Senator John McCain or Dem­ocratic Senator Barack Obama will have to make very important decisions on tax policy when he takes office in January 2009. First, the U.S. econ­omy will be recovering from the financial crisis and is already predicted to grow less than its usual rate of 3.3 percent over the last 50 years.[1] Second, Pres­ident George W. Bush’s tax cuts will expire in 2011, and the President must decide how to extend or make permanent some of the tax cut provisions.

Senator McCain will make the Bush tax cuts per­manent, with the exception of the estate tax. McCain credited the Bush tax cuts with helping the economy recover after the 2001 recession.

Senator Obama, on the other hand, will extend the Bush tax cuts only for those taxpayers who earn less than $250,000 a year—he has deemed the rest of the people “rich.” Senator Obama will also enact new tax increases on these rich individuals as well as a series of targeted tax credits for lower-income indi­viduals. Senator Obama believes that the current tax system is not progressive enough and that higher taxes on the rich should be used to give money to low-income individuals or those who do not work at all, such as retired people, reduce the deficit, and reduce the size of Social Security’s shortfall.

In other words, Obama isn’t planning merely to return to the higher taxes under Clinton for “the rich”, he plans to tax them even MORE than Clinton’s Democrat congress voted in 1993, when Clinton “discovered” that he couldn’t keep his campaign pledge to lower taxes for the middle class after all. One can’t help but wonder if Obama will discover that “the rich” are those making more than $50K-$70K per year, when his staff really crunches the numbers.

Those windmills are going to be expensive.

An ugly line has been crossed in this presidential campaign, one in which some people don’t mind calling Barack Obama a dangerous Muslim, a terrorist and worse.

And this is somehow worse than the term Bushitler? Let’s just add up the Hitler references to Bush, and compare numbers. But, of course, that would require real research and reporting, and we can’t expect that, can we?  Just count the lawyers and reporters parachuted into Alaska to defame Palin, and compare the numbers to those who have really investigated Obama’s past and alliances, and you’ll get the idea.

“To me, this all feels much worse than we’ve seen in some time,” said Kathryn Kolbert , the president of People for the American Way , which monitors political speech.

Well, yes, because this time it’s YOUR guy on the receiving end of the very kind of hatred that People for the American Way and its allies have stirred up against Bush and Republicans. Except that it isn’t, for the simple reason that no mainstream Republican organization, conservative outlet, commentator or website has used the kind of language being reported here. Rather, it’s a very small fringe of over-the-top extremists, and the Left would love to paint the entire Right as that extreme… but it just won’t wash.

Experts agree on the reasons: Obama, the Democratic nominee, is different from any other major presidential candidate in history in many ways, and people often don’t accept such change gracefully.

Come on, just say it. Obama is black, and we all know those wascally weepublicans are wacists. Oh, and by the way: which “experts”? This is journalism school mumbo-jumbo for “this is what I think, and if I phrase it this way I can pretend it’s straight news”.

That different background fuels many fears, said Penni Pier , who’s an expert on political rhetoric.

And just what are HER political leanings? Context, please?

People are still scared that terrorists are ready to strike and wonder about Obama’s background, she said, while the Internet and other outlets are endless sources of misinformation.

You can say that again, and it cuts both ways, which means it’s a meaningless comment to insert here.

Some think that Republican strategists are, as Kolbert put it, “orchestrating” the vitriol.

Sure, the Obama campaign and its major cooperative arms, the New York Times, NBC, etc.

“A great many people think they’re about to lose power. The world is changing around them, and they can’t stop that change. So their anger is boiling over,” said Mark Potok , the director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center , which tracks hate groups.

Oh, you mean like ACORN?

The nonstop bile flowing toward Obama has been expressed in many ways:

“Nonstop bile”? Now, that’s really neutral journalistic language, isn’t it? Of course, when the Obama campaign is writing the news articles, sometimes the editors forget to dress up the talking points they just got in the fax to make it look like actual news.

— Racism. People for the American Way has found that since the McCain campaign very publicly has accused ACORN, a grass-roots community group with strong ties to liberal politicians, of widespread voter-registration fraud, “ACORN offices across the nation have been subjected to an onslaught of racist and threatening voice mails and e-mails.”

How many? Where? Verified by whom? Does this mean ACORN is reporting them, and the media just takes its word for it, or does this mean the media has actually gone and verified that the threats are happening?  Does anyone think ACORN is some kind of model for trust and respect, that we should take their word for it?

— Values. Rep. Michele Bachmann , R- Minn. , told MSNBC on Friday that Obama “may have anti-American views,” and that if one looks at “the collection of friends that Barack Obama has had over his life . . . it seems that it calls into question what Barack Obama’s true beliefs and values and thoughts are.”

What in the previous questions and comments is not true?

— Patriotism and religion. At Becky’s Cafe in Springfield, Ohio , Nicole Ratliff , a cable-television sales representatives, echoed last week what many voters have said: “Obama won’t salute the flag and he has said he was a Muslim.”

I have heard countless mainstream conservative talk show hosts refuse to even let people continue on the air when they assert Obama is a Muslim. This isn’t coming from any mainstream conservative group or outlet, but only from a few nuts on the fringe. The difference here: the Right actually denounces its nuts, while the the Left embraces them and gives them candy, particularly when they are black congress-members. In any case, more people believe in alien abductions than believe Obama is actually a practicing Muslim, regardless of what small childhood exposure he may have had… so this is news? The nuts will always be with us. At least on the Right, we don’t make a fruitcake with them, and serve it on holidays.

Obama is and has always been a Christian.

Demonstrably false, and this undercuts their credibility. But since his small amount of childhood Islamic training, he has been a Christian since he was making his own choices. The truth is good enough, here, so why lie about it?

The flag controversy erupted in September 2007 , when then-fellow Democratic presidential candidates Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton had their hands over their hearts during the playing of the National Anthem in Iowa , while Obama stood with his hands clasped. An Obama spokesman said at the time that the candidate sometimes put his hand over his heart and had no substantive reason for not doing so.

The venom endures largely because not only is the Illinois senator the first African-American who’s ever come this close to the presidency, but his background — biracial, lived in Indonesia for a time, grew up in Hawaii , has the middle name Hussein — also isn’t the stuff of past presidential resumes.

Yes, the Right is just chock full of racists. Or at least it’s always safe to imply that in any mainstream news story.

That rouses suspicion among some voters, said Pier, an associate professor of communication arts at Iowa’s Wartburg College , because “People are still reeling from the 9-11 attacks, and some still have a tendency to see Muslims with fear.”

Gee, I wonder why?  This is the media attempt to portray 9/11 as an isolated event, when the truth is that it is part of a general war being conducted by Islamic fascists against the West, with the frequent acquiescence of “moderate” Muslims.  It gets very hard to tell which are which, sometimes.  In any case, Obama’s very minor Muslim background isn’t the problem, and if he was a Republican with traditional American values, he’d be embraced with open arms by the Right.  It’s his values and policies that are the problem, not his color or religious pedigree.

In addition, Pier said, many older voters grew up when racial segregation was still legal, haven’t necessarily accepted blacks in positions of power and are afraid of having a black president.

In addition, many black voters grew up being completely indoctrinated by and to the Democratic Party, and will never accept a candidate from the Republican party, black or white, because they are taught by their leaders that Republicans are racists, and black Republicans are Uncle Toms (or Uncle Colins), right up until they switch and endorse Democrats, of course.  Who are the racists here?  The Right has embraced Justice Thomas, and did so from the beginning, more proof that it’s values and policies, not skin color, that matters to the Right.

“Everything these people have stood for is sort of being questioned and to some degree eliminated by Obama,” said David Bositis , a senior research associate at Washington’s Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies , which studies African-American voting trends.

The angry voters have a 21st-century way to come together instantly and share misinformation. No longer do most people get news from newspapers or major television networks; instead they can access talk shows or Internet sites that are sympathetic to their own views.

This is pure calumny with no predicate in fact. To repeat, mainstream Right leaning talk shows do NOT encourage any of the behavior this article discusses, and actually fight against the more ridiculous charges that Obama is a secret Muslim, etc. Of course, to the Left, reporting accurately on Obama’s political alliances in the past, which the mainstream media should be doing but does not, is proof of bigotry.  Any objective reader reading the blogs linked on this site will have to conclude that the sheer hatred on Daily Kos is a couple of orders of magnitude beyond anything in any mainstream Right leaning site.

What makes these charges different from the standard campaign tit for tat is that “I can’t recall a campaign where so many people held beliefs about a candidate that were demonstrably false,” said Adam Schiffer , an expert on American political behavior and media at Texas Christian University .

I’m trying not to laugh out loud, but it’s hard. Remember, oh, 2004, and the sheer hatred thrown at Bush by the Left, including those who now are Obama’s loudest supporters?

Last week, a McCain supporter told the Arizona senator, “I don’t trust Obama. . . . He’s an Arab.”

“No, ma’am,” McCain replied, “He’s a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.”

I don’t recall Obama saying that America “is in no danger” if McCain is elected, something McCain said about Obama in response to what McCain saw as an extreme statement from one of his supporters. As usual, this article is exactly 180 degrees off center, ascribing the bad behavior of a small fringe of Obama opponents to the Right, while being blind to similar behavior from the CENTER of the Left, which is not corrected by Obama.

A man whose spiritual adviser is Wright, whose financial backer is Tony Rezko, and whose first major employer was William Ayers might not be a good choice for president. But for these associations to loom large enough in our consciousness to impact our vote, the market has to settle down so we can hear the campaign over its din.

Maybe that day is today, just in time for the debates.

The Dow Jones industrial average rebounded more than 500 points today as Wall Street snapped back from last week’s devastating losses after major governments announced further steps to support the global banking system, including plans by the U.S. Treasury to buy stocks of some banks. All the major indexes rose well over 6 percent.

The hope on the Street was that the market was finding a bottom after eight sessions of devastating losses that sent the Dow down nearly 2,400 points. But while a rebound had been expected at some point, Wall Street can expect to see volatile, back-and-forth trading in the coming days and weeks as investors work through their concerns about the banking sector, the stagnant credit markets and the overall economy.

But the market did appear to take heart when the Bush administration said it is moving quickly to implement its $700 billion rescue program, including consulting with law firms about the mechanics of buying ownership shares in a broad number of banks to help revive the stagnant credit markets and in turn get the economy moving again.

My opinion, for what it’s worth:

McCain has to go for the jugular. He has to be absolutely tough, and absolutely focused on Obama’s serious failings and past relationships, and current tax intentions. If McCain puts in another performance like the last debate, where he failed to directly challenge a great many Obama misrepresentations, and failed to directly challenge Obama’s personal fitness to be president, if he still keeps saying how much he “respects” Senator Obama, and doesn’t highlight the radical nature of Obama’s plans, the election is essentially over.

If the market just stays even tomorrow, or advances, so that McCain can be “heard over the din” in Morris’ phrase, he still has to say something worth hearing. It has to be strong, tough, sharp, and unrelenting.

He has to look like, sound like, and BE that tough fighter that he is, and not be afraid to look aggressive and sure of himself.

Snopes declares that the email is FALSE.  That’s odd, because significant parts of the email are TRUE, but it does have a few incorrect assertions.  Snopes’ practice in such situations is usually to say something is partly true and partly false, and to be very clear on the distinctions regarding which is which.  One can only wonder why that practice was not followed in this report, which was simply declared FALSE at the top, and only a careful reader would discover that much of it was TRUE.

The email first gives the history of the involvement with Fannie Mae of former CEO Jim Johnson, former CEO Franklin Raines, and former CFO Tim Howard.  Even Snopes does not deny the accuracy of this summary.

What Snopes points out, correctly, is that neither Johnson, Raines, or Howard are “Chief Economic Advisers” with formal relationships to the campaign.

While I have looked for a direct relationship between Howard and Obama, I have not found one.

However, Johnson was deeply involved in the Obama campaign in the role of “vice-chairman”, according to the NewYorkTimes.

With the Democratic National Convention only three months away, Senator Barack Obama has asked a tight circle of advisers to begin conducting a confidential search for prospective running mates.

Mr. Obama, who intends to wait until the final primaries end on June 3 before declaring victory in the presidential nominating fight with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, has sworn his advisers to secrecy. The search is in its earliest phases, officials said, and Mr. Obama has asked Jim Johnson, a longtime Democratic hand, to lead the process.

Mr. Johnson, who is a vice chairman of the Obama campaign, [emphasis mine] led the vice presidential search for Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984. In recent weeks, officials said, he started to compile information – largely biographical – for a long list of potential running mates.

Eventually, as it became clear that Obama did not want any scrutiny of his relationship with Jim Johnson, Johnson resigned from the campaign.

While Johnson was not officially a “chief economic adviser” to Obama, exactly what were his qualifications for being vice-chairman?  It certainly wasn’t his foreign policy experience, nor his health care expertise, neither of which he has.  Johnson’s primary expertise IS business, housing and economics, and it begs credulity to believe that some OTHER qualifications are the reasons Obama had appointed him vice chairman of his campaign.

Obama’s relationship with Raines, during the campaign cycle, at least, has been less than his relationship with Johnson.  Still, it is not nothing, although the Washington Post has tried to play it down as being essentially nothing.  Here are excerpts of a column on that effort by Jack Kelly:

The Washington Post is a “pretty flimsy” source of information, two Post hotshots declared in an effort to diminish a politically uncomfortable association for Sen. Barack Obama.

Franklin Raines, CEO of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) from 1999-2004, is the individual most responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis. It was on Mr. Raines’ watch that Fannie Mae went bankrupt.

He was accused of manipulating earnings statements so he could be paid bonuses to which he was not entitled.
In July, Mr. Raines was interviewed by Anita Huslin, a business reporter for the Washington Post.

“In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae’s chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself,” Ms. Huslin’s story began. “He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case’s D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health care companies and, more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing matters.”

Sen. John McCain pounced. In an ad Sep. 18, he said: “Obama has no background in economics. Who advises him? The Post says it’s Franklin Raines, for ‘advice on mortgage and housing policy.’ Shocking. Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed ‘extensive financial fraud.’ Raines made millions. Fannie Mae collapsed. Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill.”

The Obama campaign rushed out statements by Mr. Raines denying he had offered Sen. Obama advice, and by Sen. Obama denying he had sought it.

Who was the source for Ms. Huslin’s assertion that the Obama campaign had solicited Mr. Raines’ advice? Mr. Raines himself.

“I asked Huslin to provide the exact circumstances of that passage,” wrote Michael Dobbs, who writes the Post’s Fact Checker blog. “She said she was chatting with Raines during the photo shoot, and asked ‘if he was engaged at all with the Democrats’ quest for the White House. He said that he had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign. I asked him about what, and he said, Oh, general housing, economy issues.’”

But that conversation is “pretty flimsy” evidence, Mr. Dobbs said. “The McCain campaign is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama,” he said.

Howard Kurtz, the Post’s media writer, said: “(Raines) has never been a close adviser to Obama.”

The McCain campaign never said he was. The only description in the ad of the Obama-Raines relationship is a direct quote from Ms. Huslin’s story. To diminish the impact on Sen. Obama of the disclosure of an unsavory association, Mr. Dobbs and Mr. Kurtz distorted what Sen. McCain actually said.

In other words, the McCain ad was an exact report of Obama’s relationship with Raines as described by Huslin, herself a Washington Post reporter.  One way to attempt to discredit an accurate report is to exaggerate what the report said, then debunk the exaggeration, and hope the truth of the original is lost in the shuffle. That seems to be what’s happening here.

Just a question:  What if John McCain or his campaign had phoned Ken Lay, of Enron notoriety, for just a few minutes of economic advice, and the Washington Post got word of it and printed the story?   What if McCain had gotten enormous contributions from Enron just before its meteoric fall?  The rest of the in-the-tank-for-Obama media would blow that up into the biggest scandal since the WorldCom fraud case.  The double standard is on full display.

Do you recall the lengths to which the press went to attempt to connect George Bush to the Enron scandal, even though there was no “there” there?  So do I.

So, to summarize:  the email declared FALSE by Snopes is incorrect about claiming that Johnson, Raines or Howard are “chief economic advisers” on the Obama campaign.

However, the email declared FALSE by Snopes is correct that Johnson, Raines and Howard were right in the middle of and surely responsible for fraudulent accounting practices and the reporting of false profits to pump up earnings reports and get executive bonuses.

Additionally, while not a “chief economic adviser”, Johnson was closely tied into the Obama campaign as vice chairman and was Obama’s choice to trust in the role of seeking a vice-presidential candidate for Obama, despite his clearly untrustworthy performance at Fannie Mae.  As stated above, it’s difficult to believe that Johnson, whose expertise is primarily financial, was a vice-chairman on Obama’s campaign for some reason other than that expertise.

According to the Washington Post (in an article it may wish it never printed) Obama’s campaign DID call Raines a couple of times for advice on housing and the economy.  That level of participation does not rise to the level of a “chief economic adviser”, but it is not nothing, and bespeaks a comfort level that the Obama campaign has with people who ripped off the public in a very big way.

When I see emails that make exaggerated claims, behind which is some important truth, I almost wonder if the accused campaign made them up, in order to discredit any further accusations in that same direction, when the exaggerations come to light.  Maybe I’m just paranoid…  but I still wonder.

I hope your vision is 20/20, and you’re seeing past the smoke to the exact location of the fire.

A riposte attempted by the Obama campaign, er, I’m sorry, I meant the New York Times, is to try to tie McCain to Fannie/Freddie, as well.  That only works for people who want it to, because there aren’t any discredited Fannie/Freddie CEOs left to go around.   No fraudulent activity can be attributed to Rick Davis, now McCain’s campaign manager, who functioned essentially as president of a company set up by Fannie/Freddie to lobby Congress to keep regulation light.  You’ll have to read pretty far into the NYTimes article to learn that McCain continued to work towards MORE regulation and oversight of Fannie/Freddie, even though Davis, his friend, was working for them.  That, of course, is the behavior of an honest man. Davis did nothing immoral or illegal, except represent a company to congress, and unlike Obama, McCain’s actions make clear that he was completely unmoved either by the relatively small donations he received from Fannie/Freddie or the work of Rick Davis in representing them.

Additional points to ponder

According to Jennifer Rubin:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac survived scrutiny by manipulating, cajoling, and lobbying politicians and hiring board members who were politicos (e.g. Jamie Gorelick) rather than mortgage gurus. They hired lobbyists, gave massive donations, obtained nice tax breaks, and sailed below the regulatory radar screen.

Of the 354 lawmakers who received money from Freddie and Fannie between 1989 and 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd received the most. But next was . . . drumroll . . . Barack Obama. Yup. And he was only there for three years. Not too much went to John McCain, about a sixth of what Obama received (h/t Glenn Reynolds.)

But, you say, maybe all the Fannie and Freddie employees who gave money just “liked” Obama. That might make sense with ordinary institutions. But these two had a game plan to influence and sway lawmakers for the purpose of keeping them on the government gravy train and out of the regulatory line of fire. It’s no coincidence that they “liked” Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd best of all.

So it would appear that this is precisely what Obama has been railing against: Washington insiders lining the pockets of other Washington insiders while the taxpayers ultimately have to foot the bill. The Agent of Change, it seems, didn’t exactly walk the walk on this one.

Just to focus, Obama, despite being in the Senate only three years (much of that spent campaigning for president), was SECOND in the list of Fannie/Freddie donations for the period from 1989 to 2008.  That’s pretty amazing, given all the other Senators and Congress Critters who had been there the entire time.  Over a 20 year period, McCain received one sixth the Fannie/Freddie donations Obama had gotten in 3 years. Maybe Obama is just really popular with the always trendy loan executive set.

Maybe Obama really is THE ONE.

Apparently there are others who think so:

He was an individualist who considered the individualism of others an impediment to the social unity required for national greatness. Having read Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” at age 14, and having strenuously transformed himself from an asthmatic child into a robust adult, he advocated “warrior republicanism” (Hawley’s phrase). TR saw virtue emerging from struggle, especially violent struggle, between nations and between the “Anglo-Saxon” race and lesser races. Blending “muscular Christianity,” the “social gospel” — which sanctified the state as an instrument of moral reclamation — and Darwinian theory, TR believed that human nature evolved toward improvement through conflict.

This dark vision of progress through strife made him advocate concentrated national power to serve his agenda, which was radically more ambitious than the Founders’ vision of limited government maintaining order, protecting property and otherwise staying out of the way of individual striving.

Exactly. We owe entirely too much of the current morass of entitlement oriented “progressivism” and spiritualized statism to the late 19th/early 20th century progressives, whose instincts were frequently hard to distinguish from Mussolini’s. I really don’t want to be ruled by an elite who won’t take NO for an answer. Do you?

That’s the scary part of the populist message, which is often delivered by people who do not cheerfully tolerate disagreement on ends, or means. Even scarier, however, is the leftist message, for which ends are all that matter, and any means will do.

Which is why I’m voting for McCain, and NOT Obama. McCain shows at least some reticence to use the power of government to solve every problem, though he is willing to use it in places where I am not. But Obama seems to think the government is the answer to everything. In that sense, populists, who have a few fascist tendencies, look like old fashioned liberal democrats compared to modern progressives, for whom the state is all, and for whose candidate children sing songs of worship and joy.

If you’re not up on Teddy Roosevelt, you’ll find Will’s piece a bracing, quick read.

Nevertheless this information does exist, it is readily accessible and should be examined, just as the same information about McCain should be and has been scrutinized.

What is most disturbing about Obama supporters is their willingness to continue supporting their candidate not because of the facts but in spite of them.  It’s getting pretty hard to ignore Citizen Obama’s past, a past containing healthy portions of Socialism, Radicalism, ultra-left Liberalism, Chicago-style dirty politics, a la Richard Daley, and alliances with some other, shall we say, “interesting” people.

But this does not matter to many supporters of Obama because he has their vote based not on knowledge but belief.  Obama’s supporters believe he can bring change – and the operative word is ‘believe”. Many voters believe Obama is the change we need and as such they cannot be persuaded by facts.  I remain convinced that few could point to anything in the record of Obama as the reason he has their support.  To them it is a “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” belief in an as yet unseen and hoped-for future rather than an informed judgment based on facts.

In contrast we have John McCain.  Everyone has a great deal of knowledge about McCain and some people will readily admit their reticence about voting for him precisely because of what they do know.  Say what you will about him, (he wasn’t my first choice either) with McCain you KNOW what you are getting.

I believe it’s better to know. I know it’s not good to select a president simply on what I believe.

May I humbly suggest you believers get to know the man in whom you place so much hope, trust and belief BEFORE you enter the voting booth.

Go read it.

If the mainstream media is your main source of information, you’re probably poorly informed.

What I should have been doing was selling my home and buying a much bigger, more expensive one – with a mortgage I knew I would not be able to afford!  Because that way I could just sit back and let the federal government “bail” me out.  And now the latest “rescue” – McCain wants to spend 300 billion dollars (of TAXPAYER money) to have the government buy up so-called “bad” mortgages, lower the value of the homes, and then issue correspondingly new lower, more “manageable” mortgages that reflect the lower home value.  Brilliant, simply brilliant.  (Gee, that won’t have any market-effect on home values, will it…….) Meanwhile, like some kind of faux-Steinbeck character, I plod along hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel before I die and maybe getting a chance to “tend them rabbits”.

I think if I had any brains at all I’d just stop making my mortgage payments right now. But instead, I have created a short self-quiz in honor of the debate.

After listening to the Presidential debate tonight I must admit I feel like a complete:

a. idiot

b. sucker

c. schmuck

d. all of the above

…I think I’ll choose d.

P.S.  For those of you entranced with the rhetoric of “change you can believe in” – you should be careful what you wish for.  Because you may wake up some day after the election and realize you should have asked a few questions about what kind of change you were getting.