Obama, The Candidate Of No Change

Somehow I don’t think that Wall Street would have showered Barack He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Middle-Named Obama with millions of dollars if they considered him the candidate of change. As of July 31 of this year, Wall Street barons had poured nearly $10 million into Obama’s campaign. Specifically, employees of Lehman Brothers, the securities firm that declared bankruptcy Monday, had given Obama $370,524. And in the last ten years, only Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) raked in more money from Fannie Mae than Obama, and Obama has only been in the Senate four years. His annual take was actually twice Dodd’s. Does this foretell change you believe in?

Before he was forced out under an ethical cloud, Obama economic advisor and former Fanny Mae CEO Franklin Raines soaked Fannie Mae for $100 million in just six years. He was accused of instituting accounting gimmicks that exaggerated Fannie Mae’s earnings. Can anyone say “Enron?” Former Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno and her Justice Department lieutenant, Jamie Gorelick, squeezed $75 million out of Fannie Mae’s rotting carcass for their own bank accounts.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Mars) blamed the Bush Administration and proclaimed the Democrats faultless. But, in 1999 the seeds of today’s disaster were sowed when two major changes were made to the banking laws and regulations. That year, Bill Clinton signed a law that dramatically deregulated banks. That law passed the House by a 362-57 margin and by 90-8 in the Senate. At the time, the all-knowing news media declared it a long overdue modernization. But, in addition, Clinton imposed new regulations intended to facilitate home ownership by minorities. His new rules forced lenders to write loans for people whose credit ratings would have prevented them from getting loans in the first place. One of the methods lenders employed to satisfy Clinton’s goal was the subprime mortgage – a practice now condemned as predatory by the same people who forced it upon lenders in the first place. More than half of all mortgages held by African Americans are sub-prime and about 40% of Hispanic mortgages are sub-prime.

I spent about 30 minutes searching the New York Times for news stories regarding the regulation of the financial markets, and I came across this gem from the September 11, 2003 edition. The Bush Administration saw peril in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae management and proposed a new and stronger oversight agency to oversee the mortgage giants. From that article: “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,” the Times wrote.

But the reforms were thwarted by, “Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing,” wrote the Times.

“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.”

And so, to preserve the regulations that forced lenders to write doomed loans, Congressional Democrats killed stricter oversight that may very well have prevented the crisis we have today.

A further search found numerous efforts by the Bush Administration to reign in fiscal mismanagement at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In December of 2003 the Times reports that “Freddie Mac Gets Penalty And Rebuke Over Scandal,” for improper accounting that overstated earnings. In the spring of 2004 a headline read: “Fannie Mae Says Its Equity Fell By $1.6 Billion In First Quarter.” Also in 2004, the Bush Administration proposed stricter regulation of Fannie Mae to, “'reduce the potential for future corporate misconduct.”

In 2005, the year Franklin Raines was forced out, John McCain proposed stricter controls that were not enacted.

The crooks responsible for this crisis are now Obama advisors. For example Obama chose Jim Johnson, another scandal-plagued former Fannie Mae CEO, to help him pick his vice presidential candidate. There is plenty of blame to go around. But considering his associations and the fact that Obama can’t even bring himself to criticize corrupt Chicago politics, there is no reason to believe that he’s The One to clean things up.

Obama Was For Commissions Before He Was Against Them

Shocker! Barack Obama's A Liar!

And, the mainstream media doesn't notice.

Brian Williams asks Obama about the surge, and whether it has been a success. Obama answers that "even at the time of the debate of the surge, was if you put 30,000 troops in, of course it's going to have an impact."

Obama tells Brian Williams that he always said more troops would have an impact: "(snicker) What I said was even at the time of the debate of the surge, was if you put 30,000 troops in, of course it's going to have an impact. There's no doubt about that. The question is, does it solve our larger strategic questions and do the costs involved, uh, do they outweigh the benefits."

Oh really!

Here's what he said when the surge was proposed:

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there in fact I think it will do the reverse. I think it takes pressure off the Iraqis to arrive at the sort of political accommodation that every observer believes is the ultimate solution to the problems we face there. So I am going to actively oppose the president's proposal... I think he is wrong."

Mainstream Media Falls For George Soros Scam Again

Now the the George Soros funded Lancet study on Iraq death has been discredited, he's back, with another study. And, the MSM is falling for it again. The New York Times bought it hook, line and sinker. Here's the predictable Associated Press version.

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.