The Parse

Barack Obama likes to slam McCain for not mentioning the ‘middle class’ during their first debate while touting his erroneous claim that 95% of all Americans will see tax cuts under his administration.

Although he champions himself as the hero of the working class, Obama doesn’t mention that under his tax plans, one- and two-earner families, even those with no children, making $200,000 a year will see a nearly identical reduction in their income taxes as they would under McCain’s plan.  Obama has shifted his class definitions before, but I’m not sure that too many people would consider $200,000 a year (even for a four-person household) to be ‘middle class.’

Why is Obama pushing tax cuts for the wealthy while bashing McCain for planning the same cuts?

Although some commentators have held their noses and decided to support the Bush administration’s corporate bailout plan, I’m not budging.  This plan is still socialism, is still too costly and still will not ultimately solve the problem.

A Harvard economist details why the bailout plan won’t work.

Remember when Democrats and leftists bemoaned Republican and conservative questioning of their patriotism for not supporting the Iraq war and/or war on terror?

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve had Democrats pull the same line on Republicans, except it’s not lack of support for the military and national defense that makes one unpatriotic.  Rather, it’s not backing increased government intrusion into the market and higher taxes.

First Joe Biden said it was patriotic to pay higher taxes.  This past weekend Nancy Pelosi called Republicans ‘unpatriotic’ for not attending a bailout bill meeting (a meeting they weren’t invited to, mind you).

What a telling difference between how the two sides define patriotism.

YouTube’s leftwing censors are at it again.  The video posted earlier on this site and viewed by over a million people that documents Democrat culpability in the subprime market problems has been pulled off the site.

Allegedly the video was pulled because it violates music copyrights.  Yeah right.  In a matter of minutes, I could find a number of videos with copyrighted music set to largely unrelated video.  I wonder if YouTube got some complaints from the Obama campaign.  But maybe they didn’t need it.  Obama is pretty popular at Google, which owns YouTube.

A University of Cincinnati professor has penned an excellent piece that details the Clinton administration’s fault in the subprime implosion.

The Community Reinvestment Act, which Clinton loved, is mostly to blame for getting the ball rolling.  The piece skewers the mind-numbed liberals who blame Bush for this situation:

The best thing that can emerge from the current financial crisis is the realization that the government needs to stop directing economic decision making.  In a sense, the government is putting out a fire it started when it both created the CRA and assessed lending institutions by how well they were doing in response to the program. When Clinton decided, in his usual arrogance, that he knew better than the market how banks should lend money, the seeds were sown for the current financial disaster.

If you want to blame Bush for the current crisis, it might make you feel good, reinforce your sense of how the world works, enable you to find a meeting of the minds when you next engage your liberal friends over wine and quiche, but like so many things you believe and which make you feel good, it has no correspondence to reality.

How did we get to this point, at which the impact of a vote in the United States House of Representatives is related directly to what is happening in the stock market?

From the AP: “In the House chamber, as a digital screen recorded a cascade of ‘no’ votes against the bailout, Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley of New York shouted news of the falling stocks. ‘Six hundred points!’ he yelled, jabbing his thumb downward.”

Unbelievable.  Somehow our government has become so ingrained with business that its votes make stocks go up and down.  Politicians, who should be protecting the private sector from government intervention, instead apparently see it as their job to move the markets with their legislative maneuvers.  Think about it.  A United States Representative is standing up in the House, blaming his counterparts for a decline in the Dow Jones.  Our leaders should not have this kind of power.  The only way to remove it is to deregulate, get government out of business.

The parties are now slinging blame on one another for the bailout bill’s failure.  What’s worrisome is that Pelosi’s partisan rant is being cited as a reason many Republicans voted ‘no.’  Let’s hope that’s not the reason.  Let’s hope that they voted this way as a ‘no’ to socialism and corporate welfare, and not simply as a ‘no’ against Pelosi.  Sure, her bilge was misinformed and unnecessary.  But I would like to think our leaders’ principles extend beyond politics.

Nancy Pelosi is a shameless witch.  Before the bailout bill vote, she took the floor and blamed Bush for the current economic crisis.  Ironically, she slipped in a line of praise for so-called Clinton surpluses.

How dare Pelosi lie to the American people at a time like this and play partisan politics?  Particularly when this problem was exacerbated by Clinton’s Community Reinvestment Act policies!  She is either painfully ignorant of history and the cause-effect relationships that led to this mess, or she is a dishonest, disgusting person.  I would venture to say it’s a bit of both.

Democrats like Pelosi have been playing politics with the war and using it to their advantage, so why would they not do the same with this issue?  They are the ones to blame for this crisis and their lie that Bush is responsible is deplorable – but not surprising.  Republicans need to grow some teeth and get out their with the facts – the fact that it was Carter and Clinton policies that led to risky lending and inflated home prices that underpinned the meltdown; the fact that Democrats like Barack Obama and Barney Frank dipped their grubby hands in the till of Fannie and Freddie campaign donations and turned around to oppose regulation that could have averted this mess.

Here’s the vote tally in the House for the bailout bill vote, which was earlier rejected.  Send a note of thanks to your congressman if he/she voted it down, and a note to the rest that they won’t be getting your support in November.

After the vote a White House spokesman came on TV ginning up fear about an economic collapse.  Too bad.  This method of rescuing the economy is socialism and should be rejected.  Perhaps most appalling is that other, free-market options aren’t even being considered by the boneheads running this country.  How about a capital gains tax cut?  How about less regulation, since regulation is what caused this problem?  It’s as though our leaders want either more power or they want a collapse so they can say, “Told you so.”  Screw ‘em.  I’d rather take a collapse than to hand over more power and money to the corrupt morons who caused this problem.

Obama’s free speech hit team in Missouri is garnering more attention this morning.  On Fox News, Gov. Matt Blunt defended his press release that attacked the Obama campaign for threatening legal action against groups that air ads with which they disagree.  The Obama ‘truth squad’ that is tasked with making the threats includes Missouri public servants, such as sheriffs and prosecutors, who say they are simply responding to so-called misleading ads.  It was first reported on here.

After Blunt spoke, an Obama hand came on and defended the group, even as the program host read a letter the group had sent to a TV station, hinting that it was in violation of FCC licensing rules for airing NRA ads that presumably attack Obama’s stances on guns.  The Obama campaign person said the ‘truth squad’ was to prevent people from ‘lying’ about the candidate’s record.

Ironically, the person on Fox had lied about Obama’s gun record only seconds before.  Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Washington, DC’s gun ban, Obama’s campaign had said he “believes the DC handgun law is constitutional.”  And yet, the Obama robot on Fox said Obama supports law-abiding citizens’ right to possess guns.  It should be noted that the Obama campaign disavowed the statement regarding the DC gun ban, saying it was ‘in-artful.’  Note they didn’t say it was incorrect.  Obama’s record in Illinois is decidedly anti-gun, including an endorsement of an all-out ban on handguns.  And his campaign has the nerve to say he supports gun rights now?

Apparently the Obama campaign needs its own truth squad.  They are lying and obfuscating at least as much as any of his opponents.

Pundits and politicians have been pointing a lot of fingers the past week or so, blaming ‘greed,’ ‘the free market,’ and lack of regulation for the financial meltdown.  Unfortunately, most of these fingers are pointing at the wrong causes, confusing Americans at a time when clarity is paramount.

In fact, most of the blame for the collapse of the sub-prime market should be laid squarely at the steps of Democrats, with their love of socialist principles and regulation.

The Community Reinvestment Act, which encouraged lending to low-income borrowers, became law during Jimmy Carter’s administration amidst a clamor for ‘affordable housing’.  This clamor is a symptom of socialist/communist ideology that says everyone deserves equal goods and services, regardless of their ability to pay.

Under the Clinton administration, CRA was tweaked in a way that increased risky lending.  The Bush administration warned several years ago about the house of cards these policies created, but their efforts to correct it were thwarted by corrupt Democrats whose pockets were being lined by entrenched interests.

So when talking heads on TV and slobbering fools like Barney Frank start blabbering about greed and under-regulation, ignore them.  They are trying to deflect attention away from their own fault and stir anti-market, populist rage against a system that is not at fault: capitalism and the free market.  In fact, government intervention and regulation are to blame for this mess, and it is abhorrent that the socialists who created the problem are now trying to get off scot-free.

Barack Obama and Barney Frank are lying to the American people about the cause of the economic meltdown.  At such a precarious time in our nation’s history, we must reject their demagoguery, politicking and socialistic solutions and demand a return to free-market principles and less regulation.  Let the institutions fail, or (gasp) suspend the capital gains tax to create new flows of cash into the market.  That will never happen, because while politicians show no hesitation to dip into your bank account to pay for $700 billion corporate welfare packages, they would never do anything that reduces their own income.