Finally, Some Straight Talk

When the "Wall Street Meltdown" hit on Monday, John Sith McCain reverted to his natural center-left instincts and started spouting "me-too" Donk populism and pandered to their inevitable fearmongering.  Barack Obama and Joe Biden reflexively blamed it on the Bush Administration and tied McCain to it - pretty much like they do with every other issue.  Because of Sailor's misguided "quick response," his small lead in the polls evaporated.

As the week progressed, and it became clearer and clearer that this was a predominantly Democrat-caused disaster from which a great many Donks personally or politically profited - most especially Barack Hussein Obama in receiving the second largest pile of campaign contributions from the mortgage sector in the entire U.S. Senate in only three years - it became increasingly frustrating that Team Sith, which had been so PR savvy over the summer and through the conventions, was not tapping this goldmine of ammunition to counterattack with facts that could blow Rogaine Messiah out of the water.

That moratorium finally fell today in Cedar Rapids, Iowa:

Senator Obama talks a tough game on the financial markets but the facts tell a different story.  He took more money from Fannie and Freddie than any Senator but the Democratic chairman of the committee that regulates them.  He put Fannie Mae’s CEO who helped create this disaster in charge of finding his Vice President. Fannie’s former General Counsel is a senior advisor to his campaign.  Whose side do you think he is on? When I pushed legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Senator Obama was silent.  He didn’t lift a hand to avert this crisis.  While the leaders of Fannie and Freddie were lining the pockets of his campaign, they were sowing the seeds of the financial crisis we see today and enriching themselves with millions of dollars in payments.  That’s not change, that’s what’s broken in Washington....

Those same Congressional leaders who give Senator Obama his marching orders are now saying that this mess isn’t their fault and they aren’t going to take any action on this crisis until after the election.  Senator Obama’s own advisers are saying that crisis will benefit him politically.  My friends, that is the kind of me-first, country-second politics that are broken in Washington.

Well, as we have pointed about about Barry's litany of complaints over the past few months, you can get mad, or you can get even.  B.O. WILL benefit from this "crisis" - to the precise degree that Darth Queeg allows him to.  For three days and change, the Sith Master did precisely that.  Now he's finally fighting back.

Salvo #1:

The beauty of counterattacking with facts is that everything you say is documented, proven, and true.  And yet Raines is still an Obama economic guru on....mortgage and housing policy.  Probably slated to be his HUD Secretary.  Or was before this ad.

The Raines spot must have successfully smacked The One between the eyes, judging by his campaign's risible retort:

This is another flat-out lie from a dishonorable campaign that is increasingly incapable of telling the truth. Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything — ever. And by the way, someone whose campaign manager and top advisor worked and lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shouldn’t be throwing stones from his seven glass houses.

Can you say "projection"?  These people would make Colonel Nathan Jessep's career.  And it's not even close, unless Obamanation now thinks their pals at the WaPo are "dishonorable and increasingly incapable of telling the truth" as well:

• 7/16/08: “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. 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 policy matters.”
• 8/28/08: “In the current crisis, their biggest backers have been Democrats such as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (Connecutict) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (Massachusetts). Two members of Mr. Obama’s political circle, James A. Johnson and Franklin D. Raines, are former chief executives of Fannie Mae.“

What possible defense is left for Team Messiah on Raines?  Time warps?  Parallel quantum realities?  Gremlins?

You guessed it - racism!:

This is hardly subtle: Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman....

Let me stipulate: Obama's Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn't even mention a far more significant tie - that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies on a fleeting and tenuous reference in a Washington Post Style section story to suggest that Obama's principal economic adviser is former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines. Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black.

D'ya s'pose Karen Tumulty of Time magazine, the serious political analyst who jumped to that race-baiting conclusion, will choke on her bran flakes when she sees....McCain's Jim Johnson ad?:

Yeouch.  If Lucifer wasn't seeing stars from the Raines spot, he's got to be bleeding after getting his Johnson whacked.

And Ms. Tumulty?  She's a trooper:

I have been a political reporter long enough to have lived through Willie Horton, the Jesse Helms infamous "hands" ad and to have covered races in the South where people have used the slogan "one of us." I know what this stuff looks like.

So do we, Karen.  We know what libs getting nailed on substantive policy issues and hiding behind race-baiting looks like.  Intimately.  Only now your candidate's entire campaign is based upon it.  Why?  Because "have you noticed that Barack Obama is black?"  Unless you really believe that minority status should entitle crooks and thieves like Franklin Raines to live above the law, outside accountability, and make out like bandits.  Or your nominee to do the same by retaining him.

The only leg of the "Wall Street Meltdown" triangle Maverick hasn't touched upon is his own efforts to avert the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac three years ago.  However, look who's coming to his aid on that score:

To listen to Senator Barack Obama, Senator John McCain is a Johnny-come-lately to the cause of regulating financial markets. “He has consistently opposed the sorts of common-sense regulations that might have lessened the current crisis,” Mr. Obama said in New Mexico yesterday. “When I was warning about the danger ahead on Wall Street months ago because of the lack of oversight, Senator McCain was telling the Wall Street Journal — and I quote — ‘I’m always for less regulation.’ ”

But the full quotation from Mr. McCain’s March interview with the Journal’s editorial board belies Mr. Obama’s one-sided rendition. The Republican candidate went on to say, “But I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight. I think we found this in the subprime lending crisis — that there are people that game the system and if not outright broke the law, they certainly engaged in unethical conduct which made this problem worse. So I do believe that there is role for oversight.” …

In 2006, he pushed for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — while Mr. Obama was notably silent. “If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole,” Mr. McCain warned at the time.

Get this into an ad, Lord Queeg.  Drop the Meltdown Trifecta on the empty head of the Affirmative Action Candidate.  It is your destiny....