[ms61853]

How did we get into this financial mess in the first place? Well, to a large degree, it’s because lenders gave mortgages to borrowers who were unqualified, who shouldn’t have been given loans in the first place. Why did they do that?

Here’s the start of an article in the ‘Chicago Sun-Times’ from April 1995: “You’ve got only a couple thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog-food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don’t despire: You can still buy a house.” That article then suggested that people wanting to buy homes who fit this profile go see a group called ACORN.

Obama at the time had his hands on the purse strings of two organizations. He was a director of the Woods Fund, and he was Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). He gave money from both organizations to ACORN, and also provided training for ACORN workers.

According to Stanley Kurtz of National Review Online, “ACORN succeeded in drawing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the very policies that led to the current disaster.” ACORN put pressure on banks by threatening them with accusations of racism if they didn’t give loans to minorities, even if they were completely unqualified.

Starting in 1987, ACORN began pressuring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lower their standards for assuming mortage debt. And eventually they succeeded. By 1995, then President Clinton touted the fact that home-ownership in America was at an all-time high. According to Kurtz, ACORN representatives were guests of honor at this ceremony. (Note to McCain campaign: can you dig up that footage??)

But as Kurtz goes on: “At both the local and national levels, then, ACORN served as the critical catalyst, levering pressure created by the Community Reinvestment Act and pull with Democratic politicians to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a pattern of high-risk loans. Up to now, conventional wisdom on the financial meltdown has relegated ACORN and the CRA to bit parts…In fact, however, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess…And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.”

The McCain campaign needs to go after Obama’s support of ACORN and its direct role in the current financial meltdown.

They could start by reading the entire Kurtz NRO piece here. Then maybe they should put Sarah Palin on the case.

[ms61853]

Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.”

Obama needs to go to jail for this fraud.

[durito]

Someone should really kill you.

[ms61853]

Obama's birth certificate is serious question

On August, 21, 2008, prominent lawyer, Hillary supporter, former Pennsylvania Democratic Party official and former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Philip J. Berg, filed a suit in Federal court in Philadelphia alleging that, because of several factual situations, Obama is not a "natural born citizen" as the Constitution requires all candidates for President to be and he uses as proof, among other things, the testimony of Obama's paternal grandmother, a half-brother and half sister who say they witnessed that Obama was born, not in Hawaii as Obama claims, but in Kenya.

Most of these allegations could instantly be proven false if Obama were to produce the original, long form copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate for examination. Obama has consistently refused to do this and, instead, Obama's campaign website and his online supporters have offered images of a shorter Hawaiian "certificate of live birth," that many questioned documents experts say is a forgery and, doesn't definitively answer the question anyway.

Now, in legal motions filed in Federal court by attorneys for Obama and the DNC this past Monday, October 6th, Obama and the DNC request that any "discovery" in this case, i.e. the actual production and examination of Obama's original Hawaiian birth certificate, which Berg alleges does not exist because Obama was born in Kenya, be deferred until other legal issues are settled, in effect, postponing production of the birth certificate in question until after the November 4th Election.

This is truly a "Constitutional Crisis" and a Crisis for our Legal System and one that the MSM-deep, deep in the tank for Obama--wants no part in telling us exists, much less covering; you would think that the MSM would at least cover this story to debunk it and for a few laughs but, had I not gone to Berg's website, I would not have known of this latest legal move, which was invisible because not reported by the MSM. The fact that Obama will not just produce this document-a thing easily done and likely to win him many political points, while at the same time, damaging his political enemies--to settle the issue, and the fact that Obama and the DNC are willing to spend money on delaying production of this original birth certificate, tells me that Obama doesn't have one, because it doesn't exist and if it doesn't exist, Obama is disqualified from running for the Presidency, his campaign collapses and Obama, Democrats in general and the Democratic Party are thoroughly discredited and forever indelibly stained by this monumental fraud on the American people and our country's democracy; thus, the stakes for Obama, for Democrats, for the Democratic Party and, most importantly, for our democratic form of government, could not be higher. I am sure there is much frantic activity behind the scenes and that the pressure on the Federal judge hearing this case is enormous.

Can you think of any sane reason why Obama would not pull out his original birth certificate for examination and immediately settle this bothersome, costly and "distracting" suit and this controversy? I can't.

Obama and the DNC, aided by the silence of the MSM, want to keep this Federal suit, these developments, as unknown and quiet as possible, wants the action to be over before we even know that it happened; I suppose the likes of Greta Van Susteren wants to cover the monumentally important story of OJ's new trial and tribulations, instead.

Obama and the DNC are hoping that if Obama wins in November, Obama's Presidency will be a faite accompli, no one will have the guts or will want to go through the monumental Constitutional Crisis and Crisis in our Legal System that would ensue if attempts were made to remove a Constitutionally disqualified President-designate Obama from his position. The potential for riots in the streets by Obama's outraged black supporters (always a threat of implied violence useful to Democrats) is only one of the many dire scenarios one can easily conjure up. Democrats control Congress and all the chairmen of key committees that would be involved in such a Constitutional Crisis are hard-core Democrats. The Democrats probably figure that once they win, they can try every trick in the book, they will fix this problem somehow and evade blame, play dumb, throw up a confusing barrage of conflicting information, say that the citizenship requirement is just an archaic "technicality," unfair and unimportant, point fingers and say they didn't realize there was a "Crisis," and can count on most people to not want to "make waves," "rock the boat," or to want to be part of such a potentially cataclysmic upheaval endangering the peace and tranquility and the very fabric of our democracy--so, one way or the other--the Democrats will smooth things over and make this suit go away, to enter the Bermuda Triangle of unsolved and endlessly disputed controversies like the disappearance of Judge Crater, Chappaquiddick and the Kennedy Assassination.

So, the time to act is now, before the Election and the necessary awareness leading to calls for such action is what Obama and the DNC are trying to prevent, with their legal maneuvering and the MSM is also trying to prevent by their silence on this suit and this issue.

[Dbldown11]

you're an idiot.....Banks did not give out these loans because they were "pressured into it" by anyone, and especially not barack obama. They gave out these loans because they were able to sell them on the secondary market.

Even though the loans were garbage they were able to cut them up and make them look appealng to investors. So as long as the banks could write up a loan and sell it on the secondary market they would to it. Even if the loan was shitty. Why? Not because of Barack Obama, or any other politician, but because of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ The CEO of Countrywide Home Loans ( a mortgage lender no longer in business) is one of the main reasons the economy is in shit if you are looking for one man to blame (which is impossible). Countrywide initiated more sub-prime loans than anyone else, and people in that company make a sick amount of money from it. Countrywides CEO made hundreds of millions of dollars and all he did was drive his company and country into the ground....Not a bad pay day for doing the opposite of what most CEO's are supposed to do

[Dbldown11]

ms61853......You really are a moron. How could anyone ANYONE not vote for a democrat at this point? the past 8 years have been absolutely horrible, and you want to keep it going huh???? Very Smart thinking.

Hell the first 4 years were outrageous, and I thought there was no way in hell Bush could get re-elected. But the lack of intelligence in America never ceases to amaze me (I blame the south in most part for this). I may have to find a nice home in Europe somewhere if McCain wins this election

[durito]

[ms61853]

Banks did not give out these loans because they were "pressured into it" by anyone,

Funny, they WEREN'T making these type loans until the Clinton Administration and ACORN started pressuring them to in the 90s.

[durito]

[ms61853]

Most of these allegations could instantly be proven false if Obama were to produce the original, long form copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate for examination. Obama has consistently refused to do this and, instead, Obama's campaign website and his online supporters have offered images of a shorter Hawaiian "certificate of live birth," that many questioned documents experts say is a forgery and, doesn't definitively answer the question anyway.

[AgainstAllOdds]

MS...Im a fatty so make sure you bring a pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni.


Thanks Ace,

-AAO

[durito]

.

[ms61853]

ms61853......You really are a moron. How could anyone ANYONE not vote for a democrat at this point?


Since you seem to believe correlation = causation, how much has the Democratic Congress improved things in the last 2 years?

What were gas prices when they took control?

What was the unemployment rate when they took control?

What was the stock market at when they took control?

If you look these things up, you will conclude, how can anyone not vote GOP.

[Dbldown11]

Banks did not give out these loans because they were "pressured into it" by anyone,

Funny, they WEREN'T making these type loans until the Clinton Administration and ACORN started pressuring them to in the 90s.

Dude banks realized how much freaking money they could make off the loans. It doesnt matter to them whether or not the loan defaults because once it's sold on the secondary market it's off their books. So as long as investment first were buying these garbage loans, why wouldnt the banks issue them? It has nothing to do with Clinton or Obama.

By the way when was the last time this country didnt completely suck ass? Oh yeah during the Clinton administration

[durito]

d

[durito]

[ms61853]

banks realized how much freaking money they could make off the loans.

Again, they never made these type loans until they were pressured to do so. You can keep dancing around this fact all you want, but it is a fact.

Yeah as long as house prices were rising, they could always foreclose and still recoup their money. Sure you had greedy bankers who were gaming the system. But it was all a house of cards headed for a fall. And it was Clinton and ACORN who started it.

You do realize that Clinton handed Bush an economy in recession when Bush took Office?

[picantel]

The facts here are simple. MS is obviously one of the small working american citizens so his salary qualifies him heavily into the democratics. That begs the question- why is he so pro republican. I think most of us know the answer. He would not be putting up these threads if Obama was white. 10 years of delivering pizzas to 'those blacks' has hardened his heart to minorities.

[durito]

[Jacey]

Someone should really kill you.

this

[durito]

d

[Jacey]

Has anyone ever seen MS's birth certificate? I'm not sure he's an American.

[ms61853]

Most of these allegations could instantly be proven false if Obama were to produce the original, long form copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate for examination. Obama has consistently refused to do this and, instead, Obama's campaign website and his online supporters have offered images of a shorter Hawaiian "certificate of live birth," that many questioned documents experts say is a forgery and, doesn't definitively answer the question anyway.

[durito]

g

[ms61853]

The facts here are simple. MS is obviously one of the small working american citizens so his salary qualifies him heavily into the democratics. That begs the question- why is he so pro republican. I think most of us know the answer. He would not be putting up these threads if Obama was white. 10 years of delivering pizzas to 'those blacks' has hardened his heart to minorities.

Don't kid yourself. Hillary sucked, too.

Not quite as bad, though. She just pandered to Marxists. Hussein Osama is a Marxist.

[durito]

d

[durito]

Don't kid yourself. Hillary sucked, too.

Not quite as bad, though. She just pandered to Marxists. Hussein Osama is a Marxist.

You don't know what a Marxist is.

[picantel]

Don't kid yourself. Hillary sucked, too.

Not quite as bad, though. She just pandered to Marxists. Hussein Osama is a Marxist.

Not sure if you are aware of this but with racism comes sexism. The only reason you like Palin is because she is a right wing religious nutjob from a state that has a total of 3 black people.

[durito]

ds

[ms61853]

The only reason you like Palin is because she is a right wing religious nutjob from a state that has a total of 3 black people.

Well, not really, but you are probably too obtuse to realize you just admitted that you know I choose a candidate based on their views and not their sex or race.

[picantel]

Well, not really, but you are probably too obtuse to realize you just admitted that you know I choose a candidate based on their views and not their sex or race.

Well you certainly did not choose by the facts. I have never in all my life seen someone posts as much ridiculous crap as you have. Blaming Obama for the financial crisis is something so ludicrous I can only think you put a buncha money on McCain and after realizing you are going to lose your bankroll of $83 you are trying anything you can to get it back.

[ms61853]

Well you certainly did not choose by the facts. I have never in all my life seen someone posts as much ridiculous crap as you have. Blaming Obama for the financial crisis is something so ludicrous I can only think you put a buncha money on McCain and after realizing you are going to lose your bankroll of $83 you are trying anything you can to get it back.

“At both the local and national levels, then, ACORN served as the critical catalyst, levering pressure created by the Community Reinvestment Act and pull with Democratic politicians to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a pattern of high-risk loans. Up to now, conventional wisdom on the financial meltdown has relegated ACORN and the CRA to bit parts…In fact, however, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess…And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.”

Those are the facts.

[ms61853]

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10092008...ts__132771.htm

Two Ohio voters, including Domino's pizza worker Christopher Barkley , claimed yesterday that they were hounded by the community-activist group ACORN to register to vote several times, even though they made it clear they'd already signed up.


Barkley estimated he'd registered to vote "10 to 15" times after canvassers for ACORN, whose political wing has endorsed Barack Obama, relentlessly pursued him and others.

Claims such as his have sparked election officials to probe ACORN.

"I kept getting approached by folks who asked me to register," Barkley said. "They'd ask me if I was registered. I'd say yes, and they'd ask me to do it [register] again.

"Some of them were getting paid to collect names. That was their sob story, and I bought it," he said.

Barkley is one of at least three people who have been subpoenaed by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections as part of a wider inquiry into possible voter fraud by ACORN. The group seeks to register low-income voters, who skew overwhelmingly Democratic.

"You can tell them you're registered as many times as you want - they do not care," said Lateala Goins, 21, who was subpoenaed.

"They will follow you to the buses, they will follow you home, it does not matter," she told The Post.

She added that she never put down an address on any of the registration forms, just her name.

A third subpoenaed voter, Freddie Johnson, 19, filled out registration cards 72 times over 18 months, officials said.

"It feeds the public perception that there could be [fraud], and that makes the pillars fall down," said local Board of Elections President Jeff Hastings.

Registering under a fake name is illegal. But officials usually catch multiple registrations and toss them.

The major risk of fraud growing out of mass canvassing involves the possibility of ineligible voters filing absentee ballots, and thus avoiding checks at polling places, said Republican National Committee chief counsel Sean Cairncross.

The subpoenas come as Republicans have ramped up criticism of ACORN. Officials in Nevada raided ACORN's Las Vegas office Tuesday, accusing the group of signing people up multiple times - in some cases under phony names, like those of Dallas Cowboys.

ACORN's Cleveland spokesman, Kris Harsh, said his group collected 100,000 voter-registration cards; only about 50 were questionable, he claimed.

As for workers, "We watch them like a hawk," he said.

[Dbldown11]

The facts are you're a racist ignorant moron. You posted Hussein Osama earlier in this thread.

You are an idiot and obviously a racist. The facts are simple. Obama is the better candidate. McCain is a man that has such little respect for American people and their intelligence that he selects someone for his vice-presidential running mate that has ZERO qualifications just because she is an attractive woman, and they needed something like that to even have a chance.

This is a woman who has no clue what she's talking about and reverts to funny little anecdotes to get people to like her. She didnt even know what the Bush Doctrine was when asked. She is a fraud and a joke and could VERY WELL be our next president considering McCain has had cancer numerous times and is old ass hell. Is that REALLY a smart decision? Honestly? Not to mention that the ****ing republicans are reverting to the same old god damn scare tactics they always use to get feeble minded americans (Again the ****ing South!) to vote for them.

Remember that in the last election if we didnt vote for Bush and Cheney the world was basically going to implode according to them????Well we are closer to that happening than we ever have been before. Scare tactics are what people who have no business running this country use in order to get people to listen to them! God I really wish the South had won the Civil War....I mean really they are just so far behind, they only bring the rest of the country down

[JC]

Don't let the facts get in your way.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/162789

Subprime Suspects
The right blames the credit crisis on poor minority homeowners. This is not merely offensive, but entirely wrong.

Daniel Gross
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Oct 7, 2008 | Updated: 12:58 p.m. ET Oct 7, 2008
We've now entered a new stage of the financial crisis: the ritual assigning of blame. It began in earnest with Monday's congressional roasting of Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld, and continued on Tuesday with Capitol Hill solons delving into the failure of AIG. On the Republican side of Congress, in the right-wing financial media (which is to say the financial media), and in certain parts of the op-ed-o-sphere, there's a consensus emerging that the whole mess should be laid at the feet of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failed mortgage giants, and the Community Reinvestment Act, a law passed during the Carter administration. The CRA, which was amended in the 1990s and this decade, requires banks—which had a long, distinguished history of not making loans to minorities—to make more efforts to do so.

The thesis is laid out almost daily on The Wall Street Journal editorial page and in the National Review. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer provides an excellent example, writingthat "much of this crisis was brought upon us by the good intentions of good people." He continues: "For decades, starting with Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, there has been bipartisan agreement to use government power to expand homeownership to people who had been shut out for economic reasons or, sometimes, because of racial and ethnic discrimination. What could be a more worthy cause? But it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—which in turn pressured banks and other lenders—to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity." The subtext: if only Congress didn't force banks to lend money to poor minorities, the Dow would be well on its way to 36,000. Or, as Fox Business Channel's Neil Cavuto put it: "I don't remember a clarion call that said: Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster."

Let me get this straight. Investment banks and insurance companies run by centimillionaires blow up, and it's the fault of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and poor minorities?

These arguments are generally made by people who read the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and ignore the rest of the paper—economic know-nothings whose opinions are informed mostly by ideology and, occasionally, by prejudice. Let's be honest. Fannie and Freddie, which didn't make subprime loans but did buy subprime loans made by others, were part of the problem. Poor congressional oversight was part of the problem. Banks that sought to meet CRA requirements by indiscriminately doling out loans to minorities may have been part of the problem. But none of these issues is the cause of the problem. Not by a long shot. From the beginning, subprime has been a symptom, not a cause. And the notion that the Community Reinvestment Act is somehow responsible for poor lending decisions is absurd.

Here's why.

The Community Reinvestment Actapplies to depository banks. But many of the institutions that spurred the massive growth of the subprime market weren't regulated banks. They were outfits such as Argent and American Home Mortgage, which were generally not regulated by the Federal Reserve or other entities that monitored compliance with CRA. These institutions worked hand in glove with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, entities to which the CRA likewise didn't apply. There's much more. As Barry Ritholtz notes in this fine rant, the CRA didn't force mortgage companies to offer loans for no-money down, or to throw underwriting standards out the window, or to encourage mortgage brokers to aggressively seek out new markets. Nor did the CRA force the credit-rating agencies to slap high-grade ratings on subprime debt.

Second, many of the biggest flameouts in real estate have had nothing to do with subprime lending. WCI Communities, builder of highly amenitized condos in Florida (no subprime purchasers welcome there), filed for bankruptcy in August. Very few of the tens of thousands of now-surplus condominiums in Miami were conceived to be marketed to subprime borrowers, or minorities—unless you count rich Venezuelans and Colombians as minorities. The multi-year plague that has been documented in brilliant detail at IrvineHousingBlog is playing out in one of the least subprime housing markets in the nation.

Third, lending money to poor people and minorities isn't inherently risky. There's plenty of evidence that in fact it's not that risky at all. That's what we've learned from several decades of microlending programs, at home and abroad, with their very high repayment rates. And as The New York Times recently reported, Nehemiah Homes, a long-running initiative to build homes and sell them to the working poor in subprime areas of New York's outer boroughs, has a repayment rate that lenders in Greenwich, Conn., would envy. In 27 years, there have been fewer than 10 defaults on the project's 3,900 homes. That's a rate of 0.25 percent.

On the other hand, lending money recklessly to obscenely rich white guys, such as Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, or Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, can be really risky. In fact, it's even more risky, since they have a lot more borrowing capacity. And, here, again, it's difficult to imagine how Jimmy Carter could be responsible for the supremely poor decision-making seen in the financial system. I await the Krauthammer column in which he points out the specific provision of the Community Reinvestment Act that forced Bear Stearns to run with an absurd leverage ratio of 33:1, that instructed Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers to blow up hundreds of millions of their clients money, and that required its septuagenarian CEO to play bridgewhile his company ran into trouble. Perhaps Neil Cavuto knows which CRA clause required Lehman Brothers to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars in short-term debt in the capital markets and then buy tens of billions of dollars of commercial real estate at the top of the market. I can't find it. Did AIG plunge into the credit-default swaps business with abandon because ACORN members picketed its offices? Please. How about the hundreds of billions of dollars of leveraged loans—loans banks committed to private equity firms that wanted to conduct leveraged buyouts of retailers, restaurant companies, and industrial firms? Many of those are going bad now, too. Is that Bill Clinton's fault?

Look. There was a culture of stupid, reckless lending, of which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the subprime lenders were an integral part. But the dumb lending virus originated in Greenwich, Ct., midtown Manhattan, and Southern California, not Eastchester, Brownsville, and Washington. Investment banks created a demand for subprime loans because they saw it as a new asset class that they could dominate. They made subprime loans for the same reason they made other loans: They could get paid for making the loans, for turning them into securities, and for trading them—frequently using borrowed capital.

At Monday's hearing, Republican Rep. John Mica of Florida gamely tried to pin Lehman's demise on Fannie and Freddie. After comparing Lehman's small political contributions to Fannie and Freddie's much larger ones, Mica asked Fuld what role Fannie and Freddie's failure played in Lehman's demise. Fuld's response: "de minimis."

Lending money to poor people doesn't make you poor. Lending money poorly to rich people does.