A picture is worth a thousand words. So here is a picture of our blithering messiah unable to understand reality:
“The private sector’s doing fine.”
“Michael Eden is the Grand Poobah over all of the spacetime Multiverse.”
Both statements are equally true. Or rather equally false.
Even back in April when Obama was claiming that his policies were working, the fact was that median wages for the middle class were plummeting far more than they were when Obama was demonizing George Bush over the decline in median wages. Median wages have declined 10.2% under Obama’s regime. It’s down by $4,300 – way over TWICE as much as it was under Bush. Since then the bottom has fallen out of Obama’s claims, with not only the GDP revised downward, but job figures for the preceding three months likewise being revised downward.
“Revised downward” is actually a good metaphor for the entire Obama presidency: fully 63 out of the last 64 “official” jobs reports have been revised downward under this propaganda presidency. You have to go to North Korea today to find a government that is lying to its people more than our government under Obama.
Democrats are celebrating Obama’s 27 months of job growth. They wouldn’t be abject hypocrites had they not demonized George Bush for 52 consecutive months of job growth.
Normally, when a president calls a press conference he has something major to announce; he’s actually accomplished something. In this case, Obama calls a press conference to do nothing more than grandstand and continue his “the one and only person who must be above blame is the president – unless that president happens to be a Republican in which case he is the only person who must be blamed.”
I remember coming across a statement from the Soviet Union not long before its collapse in which Soviet big government totalitarians actually blamed seventy-two years of bad weather after their policies resulted in perpetual famine – having executed all their other viable scapegoats. That’s the true audacity of hope: hope that the benighted people will continue to believe the utterly asinine lies of the left even after it is beyond obvious that they have failed.
While blaming Bush is a fountain that will never run out as long as Obama has one last breath of air in his lungs, apparently it is worn out enough that Obama had to find new scapegoats, such as Europe (but all Spain and France and Greece are saying is that they want to be like Obama and make other people pay for their reckless government spending) and the Republican House for refusing to pass everything Obama wants. Never mind that explorers had actually discovered the continent of Europe even previous to the Bush years and never mind that when the U.S. economy went from wonderful to terrible during Bush’s final two years in office the Democrats not only controlled the House but also controlled the Senate as well. And never mind that Obama had complete control of the government for his first two years given that he had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to go with a massive majority in the House – and wasted it passing his soon-to-be-found unconstitutional ObamaCare mandate over an angry nation that overwhelmingly knew it was unconstitutional.
The unemployment rate was 4.4% when the Democrat Party swept the Congress with Nancy Pelosi ruling over the House and Harry Reid running the Senate. What about Democrat Party obstructionism? Regarding bipartisan compromise, Nancy Pelosi, the physical embodiment of fingernails raking across a chalkboard, had this to say when she was asked when the Democrats would produce their own plan while demonizing Bush’s plan: “Never. Is that soon enough for you?” For the official record, Pelosi was right: Democrats never DID produce any kind of plan while successfully filibustering Bush. The Democrats governed entirely by demagoguing Bush over everything under the sun and blocking him in everything he tried to do.
By the way, Barack Obama was one of those obstructionist Democrats. On the debt ceiling, Obama took a hard-core position and not only voted against it, but demonized Bush as a failed leader for needing one. And this is the same cynical lying weasel who has since demanded the three largest debt ceiling increases in the history of the entire human race.
The Democrats actually blockaded Bush time and time again. Do you know why our economy collapsed in 2008? You can answer the question in three words: “Fannie and Freddie.” As much as Democrats want to demonize the private sector and George Bush, the fact of the matter is that Fannie and Freddie – which controlled over half of the mortgages in America – were the VERY FIRST entities to collapse and triggered the collapse of firms such as Lehman Brothers for the primary reason that Lehman suddenly found itself holding Fannie Mae-bundled mortgage backed securities that were suddenly known to be toxic. Barney Frank in 2005 brushed off a question of whether the government’s push to increase home-ownership rates might result in people buying more home than they could afford and inflating the housing market by barking, “We’ll deal with that problem if it happens.” But we find that not only would Democrats NOT deal with it, but they wouldn’t let Bush or Republicans deal with it either.
We find that this crisis created by Democrat policies began to build not under George Bush but under and in fact because of Bill Clinton late in his presidency:
“Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.”
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”
George Bush began trying to seriously deal with the looming housing bubble which was guaranteed to create a mortgage meltdown as early as 2003:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10— The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. (New York Times, September 11, 2003)
You can read how Barney Frank responded in that same article:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10— The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. (New York Times, September 11, 2003)
We find that George Bush tried not once, not twice, but SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to their collapse. Did you read that? SEVENTEEN TIMES.
Congress chartered Fannie and Freddie to provide access to home financing by maintaining liquidity in the secondary mortgage market. Today, almost half of all mortgages in the U.S. are owned or guaranteed by these GSEs. They are mammoth financial institutions with almost $1.5 Trillion of debt outstanding between them. With the fiscal challenges facing us today (deficits, entitlements, pensions and flood insurance), Congress must ask itself who would actually pay this debt if Fannie or Freddie could not?
And it came to pass exactly as John McCain warned. And now we KNOW who would actually pay for it: YOU.
Even the New York Times FINALLY began to be concerned over the impact of a collapse by Fannie and Freddie as these words from July 2008 document (I cited that in a piece available here):
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so big — they own or guarantee roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market — that the thought that they might falter once seemed unimaginable. But now a trickle of worries about the companies, which has been slowly building for years, has suddenly become a torrent.
Just before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completely went belly up and started the economic wrecking ball crashing into America, Barney Frank as the powerful Democrat Chairman of the Financial Services Committee had this to say:
REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MASS.: I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They’re not the best investments these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward.
I document the process by how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac operated here, explaining:
[That] the Los Angeles Times on May 31, 1999 describes how this process turned into a bubble, as more begat more, and then more and more begat more and more and more:
Lenders also have opened the door wider to minorities because of new initiatives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–the giant federally chartered corporations that play critical, if obscure, roles in the home finance system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities; that provides lenders the funds to lend more. . . .
In a nutshell, Fannie and Freddie, in their role as Government Sponsored Enterprises, bought tens of millions of mortgages, and then repackaged them into huge mortgage-backed securities that giant private entities such as Bear Stearns, AIG and Lehman Brothers purchased. What made these securities particularly attractive to the private banking entities was that these securities were essentially being sold – and had the backing – of the United States government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, again, are Government Sponsored Enterprises.
The Role of the GSEs is to provide liquidity and stability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. Step 1 Banks lend money to Households to purchase and refinance home mortgages Step 2 The GSEs purchase these mortgage from the banks Step 3 GSEs bundle the mortgages into mortgage-backed securities Step 4 GSEs sell mortgage-backed and debt securities to domestic and international capital investors Step 5 Investors pay GSEs for purchase of debt and securities Step 6 GSEs return funds to banks to lend out again for the issuance of new mortgage loans.
Now, an intelligent observer would note a primary conflict: the GSE’s role was to “provide stability,” and yet at the same time they were taking on “significantly more risk” in the final year of the Clinton presidency. What’s wrong with this picture?
The GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were designed to bundle up the mortgages into mortgage backed securities and then sell them to the private market.
Fannie Mae is exempt from SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] regulation. Which screams why Bush wanted to regulate them. This allowed Fannie Mae to bundle up mortgages, which were then rated AAA with no requirement to make clear what is in the bundle. Which screams why Bush wanted to regulate them.
This is what allowed the toxic instruments that have been sold across the world to proliferate. And then to explode. It also created a situation where money institutions did not know and could not find out whether potential inter-bank business partners were holding these “boiled babies on their books, complete with a golden stamp on the wrapping,” rather than safe instruments. This then inclined banks to a natural caution, to be wary of lending good money to other banks against these ‘assets’. And thus banks refused to lend to one another.
And it was Democrats, not Bush, and not Republicans, who were all over this disaster that destroyed our economy in 2008.
We were led by a pathologically dishonest media to believe that Republicans had created this mess, when it fact it had been Democrats. And so we gave the very fools who destroyed our economy total power.
And what have they done in the two years since?
I added the last link to point out that we’re looking at a $600 TRILLION problem and Barack Obama’s supporters are COMPLETELY BEHIND that $600 trillion problem.
You find that Barack Obama took more money in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a shorter period of time than any politician in history. Fellow Democrat Chris Dodd’s money came over twenty years; Obama took all of his money from the GSEs in just three years. And Lehman Brothers and AIG that led the private sector into collapse? Yeah, Obama took more money from THEM than anybody else, too.
If you believe the Democrat Party, the fact that Fannie and Freddie controlled over half of all the mortgages in the United States, and the fact that Fannie and Freddie went completely bankrupt and precipitated the financial crash of 2008, and the fact that economic experts predicted Fannie and Freddie would cause an economic collapse, and the fact that even the New York Times admitted concern over a “torrent of worries” caused by Fannie and Freddie’s massive exposure shortly prior to the economic collapse, all somehow go to prove that Fannie and Freddie were in no way responsible for the 2008 economic collapse. As insane as that is, that is what they have to say.
Let me put it bluntly: if you don’t understand that Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s 2008 collapse created the financial crisis, you are a fool. If you don’t acknowledge that the Democrat Party engineered that collapse and then refused to allow George Bush or anyone else to reform these massive GSEs to prevent that collapse from happening, you are a liar. Which is why I routinely label Democrats as lying fools.
Democrats essentially said, “We’re going to destroy America and then we’re going to use our mainstream media propagandists to blame the Republicans for what we did. The extent of the historic bias in the media is astonishing.
So Obama and the Democrats continually demonize Republican obstructionism and the mainstream media refuses to put that story into any kind of context of DEMOCRAT obstructionism. Why is it a valid charge that the Republican House should be blamed as “obstructionist” given that DEMOCRATS had both the House AND the Senate when the economy went bad under Bush? When have you heard about such a challenge in the media? Democrats have blamed Republicans and Bush for four years now about destroying the economy. Where has the media ever even so much as questioned that premise, let alone provide the facts I document for you here? Further, Obama and the Democrats – in trying to demonize Republicans for their “obstructionism” – are demanding that Republicans vote for what is essentially the son of the son of Obama’s first massive and massively failed stimulus. Remember that first massive stimulus that was officially $862 billion but which the CBO said would actually cost $3.27 TRILLION when it was all said and done? Remember that second stimulus program for $447 billion that will likewise cost far more than that? How many more stimulus programs should Obama get? How many trillions of dollars in government spending is enough? Have you heard these questions from ABC, NBC or CBS???
Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority leader, made an interesting observation. He basically said, “The president keeps accusing the Republicans of wanting America to fail. That’s not true. If Republicans wanted America to fail, they would SUPPORT the president and his failed policies.”
Because they ARE failed policies. They have wildly failed and they have even failed according to Obama’s own White House. Obama’s team predicted that if Obama’s $862 billion stimulus was enacted unemployment would not go over 8%. They were clearly wrong. Obama again and again promised that his stimulus was filled with “shovel ready jobs,” only to later laugh and say that it wasn’t as “shovel-ready as we expected.” That admission after having made repeated claims that it WAS creating all kinds of shovel-ready jobs. Is the fact that Obama just admitted that his entire economic policy was based on lies a joke to you? And when Obama demanded yet another of the same massively expensive policy failure as before he merely made the same bogus promises in slightly different words. Are you really that stupid? The Obama team predicted that unemployment would be under 6% by now if his FIRST stimulus passed, let alone his SECOND massive stimulus and now the THIRD one that he demands. In fact unemployment is a full point higher right now than team Obama predicted it would be if we had NOT passed his stimulus, which is to say that by Obama’s own math his administration was WORSE than nothing along with costing us trillions of dollars we now can’t get back.
And what is the Democrats response to that? A fantasy story based on counterfactual claims: if we hadn’t passed the stimulus things would have been worse. Don’t remember what he said back then because they turned out to be a sack of lies; remember our new lies now. And if George Bush hadn’t been president, space aliens would have destroyed the entire human race. Prove that one wrong. Obama’s own projections prove that to be false; but the lies they keep a changin’ because that’s what hope and change means – keep telling changing lies and hope the people buy them.
We have now repeatedly found that EVERYTHING Obama promised and predicted has been a LIE. Obama has failed across the board. Now he’s either telling the same lying predictions about his leadership all over again or replacing them with new lying predictions.
If you want to know what is “obstructing” jobs in America, look no further than Barack Obama and the Democrat Part and their anti-business, anti-growth policies.
The biggest “obstruction” of all facing America is the one shoved up Democrats’ rear ends. Sorry to end on such a crass note, but the truth is invariably an unpleasant thing where Democrats are concerned.
Start Thinking Right 