None other than Catfish and yours truly with Senator John Cornyn. We had lunch with him today at Denton County GOP Headquarters. I found him to be a genuinely likeable, very approachable guy. We already know about his politics, so it was nice to meet him in person.What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.Well, heck. That sounds like a bad idea. If I were a person of integrity, I'd probably try to stop such a plan.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor, which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house, along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans...Wait. What?
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?Where's the outrage? If this were Sen. John McCain, there'd be hell to pay, wouldn't there?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" (http://snipurl.com/457to): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."If you're not angry now, you should see what else has gone on. As Mr. Card points out, following the money presented some very uncomfortable facts for a pro-Obama press. The solution? Just ignore it.
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
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.Card calls the media to task, and he's none too kind about it:
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.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?But he's not just being critical - he's offering solutions:
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 (NOW) 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.I'm not a betting man, but I will bet that we won't see this happen.
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.
When I pulled up near Obama's house, though, I immediately noticed a drastic change in the neighborhood.Sounds like Checkpoint Charlie, doesn't it? Here's where the fun begins:
Concrete barricades now guard both ends of Obama's block, while metal barricades, like the ones used to hold back crowds during parades, are lined up on Hyde Park Boulevard.
Whatever you do, keep moving.
Secret Service, sheriff's deputies, Chicago Police officers and plainclothes officers are scattered throughout the area.
Frankly, I felt like I had just entered the safest zone in America.Here's the scary part, now: she's okay with this. She is willing to give up YOUR freedom for HER safety. Isn't that nice?
For the first time -- in a long time --while on the South Side, I didn't worry about leaving my car parked on the street or about walking back to it several hours later in the dark.
Obviously, law enforcement is doing what needs to be done to ensure a presidential candidate's safety.
But it does make me think.
Obama's neighbors have been forced to give up certain of their personal freedoms in order to ensure his safety.
There's no telling how many guns would be taken off the street in gang- and drug-plagued neighborhoods if police were to set up roadblocks and search everyone going into those areas.Okay, enough picking on Mary, because she's not the one who scares me. I mean, we know she's a lunatic already. What's really scary for me this Halloween week is this: it's how many otherwise rational, sane people agree with her. Granted, it's not a majority by a longshot, but it does demonstrate a well-worn maxim: some people will believe anything. What's worse, some of these people are voting, some of them for the first time in their lives. You need to get up off your complacent butts and vote, people. Do it now, or you'll have people like Mary Mitchell making decisions for you.
For those of you who argue that what I am proposing violates basic civil rights, forget it.
Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.So much for freedom of the press, eh? Either you agree with the Pravda line, or you're cut off.
"This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election," wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.
