This 2005 video confirms the connnection between the One and Fannie Mae.
Some funny coincidences:
In 2005– Senator John McCain partnered with three other Senate Republicans to reform the government’s involvement in lending, after an attempt by the Bush administration died in Congress two years earlier.
Democrats blocked the reform.
In 2005– Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus met with Fannie Mae for a “family” event. In 2005 Democrats also blocked reform of Fannie Mae:
Monica Langley of the WSJ continues the day’s approved punditry:
More broadly, the McCain campaign aims to halt what it sees as a perceived decline in the crispness and precision of Gov. Palin’s latest remarks as well as a fall in recent polls, according to several advisers and party officials.
McCain officials denied any problems inside the campaign. “The nature of political campaigns, with all their ups and downs, is for insiders and outsiders and no-siders to register complaints, often anonymously,” said Tucker Eskew, a counselor for Gov. Palin. “We all in this campaign understand that, and we’re not distracted by it, even as we welcome well-intentioned and good advice.”
Some prominent Republicans and senior members of Congress have expressed worries about certain facets of the Palin campaign, particularly that Gov. Palin may be “overprepared” and not encouraged to be herself, an adviser said.
“She hasn’t had the time or inclination to question the judgments of the people telling her to hit her marks,” said one Republican strategist. “Gov. Palin is a team player, but the campaign needs to adjust to a game plan that works for her.”
For his part, Mr. Palin has worried about the frequent separation of his wife from her family, friends and Alaska staff, an adviser said. Accordingly, her family will be with her in Sedona during this week. Also, a key Alaska staffer joined the Palin operation Sunday.
Meanwhile, the more experienced advisers assigned to her by the McCain campaign are accustomed to working with seasoned candidates, not someone “completely green on the national stage,” one strategist said. Several Republican backers have griped that the campaign has put the candidate in difficult situations, from sitting for high-profile television interviews to popping into meetings with foreign leaders, some of whom made sexist remarks, said several officials.
“It’s time to let Palin be Palin — and let it all hang out,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist
I am not going to join the chorus of Conservatives calling the Palin pick a failure. Yes, she had a miserable interview with Katie Couric that was also obviously edited with a critical eye. 36 days in a media that changes the story every five minutes is a lifetime. We haven’t even hit October yet. Gallup’s 8 point deficit is disheartening andwe all know that the Battleground 2 point lead is an outlier. Palin is not a lost cause. Sit back and remember the day after the speech at Barackropolis and the energy thatyou felt when Ms. Wasilla came up to the podium and how awesome her speech was the following Wednesday.
Jonathan Martin of Politico reports:
Barack Obama’s campaign earlier this month sought to find a rape victim to appear in a campaign commercial, according to an email obtained by Politico.
Kiersten Steward, director of public policy at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, served as a conduit between the campaign and victims and women’s advocates.
“Obviously, this is a big ask and I haven’t seen a script but presumably it will be a brief this is what happened to me, we need someone who will fight for women like me, these are the guys to do it,” Steward wrote in a September 15th email. “Again, that’s just my assumption given how these things
usually go.”Steward, a former top aide to Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), said the Obama campaign would have a crew in Washington and was hoping to film that week.
She didn’t respond to a message.
The Obama campaign wouldn’t detail the strategy behind finding an individual to discuss such a sensitive topic, but did suggest the ad may be aimed at underscoring their candidate’s support for abortion rights and ongoing effort to retain those women that backed Hillary Clinton in the primary.
“Choice is an important issue and we’re going to continue talking about it in battleground states through the election,” said spokesman Bill Burton.
Obama first. Dignity second.
The Messiah leads McCain on all major issues according to Rasmussen. Even Iraq. A lot can happen in 35 days, so rather than panic, let’s…
If you go to Google News and you search “Palin”, the top eight stories are negative. It is clear Palin has been carefully handled and this, combined with the concert of messaging from the media painting Palin as unqualified and unprepared has provided a unique opportunity for the McCain ticket. As mentioned by my fellow TBV colleague below, uncage the pitbull, give her a gun, and let her get her groove back. The media are aware of this opportunity and are already framing Thursday’s debate as “Palin cannot afford a single misstep.” The truth is expectations have been beaten down, an ancillary result of the media’s portrayal of her. If McCain and Rick Davis get the handlers away from her, and let her be herself, I believe a second “coming out”, this time with more hype and coverage b/c of the debate format, could be just what McCain needs. Let her loose, we want Sarah back.
Byron York makes a great point over at the Corner:
So why has she done so badly in her two broadcast interviews? One reason is her failure to draw on her own experience. For example, when ABC’s Charles Gibson brought up cost controls for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, she appeared to know little about the issue. Yet everyone knows, to take one example, that governors have been complaining long and loud about the burdens imposed on states by the federal government’s reimbursement policies on Medicaid. Palin has had to deal with that in Alaska — I talked with her budget director about it yesterday. And yet Palin said nothing about her own experience. The same was true for education and a bunch of other issues. Oddly, the area in which she did bring up her Alaska experience was in foreign affairs — Alaskans can see Russia — when it wasn’t at all relevant to the question at hand.
What do governors do when they run for president? They talk about what they’ve done in Texas, or what they’ve done in Arkansas, or what they’ve done in California. It’s the way they make the case to voters that they not only have executive experience but experience dealing with some — certainly not all — of the issues they will face as president. Governor Palin could cite her own experience much more. Why she hasn’t, at least so far, is a mystery.
Back in 2000, I remember the President discussing his education reform in Texas as well as all the times he crossed the aisles to work with Democrats. It is not too late to recouch the debat, but she needs to step up and grab the spotlight from Obama. We were at our best last month when Palin spoke freely, whether it was at the convention or on September 10 when she arrived back in Alaska for the first time. Byron York also links to Sarah’s State of the State speech from earlier this year:
With this progress, it is with great confidence that I say our future is bright. Industry knows we want responsible development. Anadarko will drill Alaska’s first-ever gas- targeted wells on the North Slope. Chevron, FEX, Renaissance – many others are exploring. That’s ratification of AGIA’s promise to make investments profitable for industrious explorers. There’s more we can do to help leaseholders, to ramp up development. Our new reservoir study can increase development and we will ensure better, publicly supported project coordination. Besides oil, gas, and mining, we’re advancing tourism, to show the world Alaska’s majesty. We’re supporting our tremendous fisheries – for 150 years they have been the economic and social heart of our coastal communities. They define and sustain us, and I will not let politics interfere with management-for-abundance of our largest private sector employer.
To cultivate timber and agriculture, we’re encouraging responsible, economic efforts to revitalize our once-robust industries. We can and must continue to develop our economy, because we cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government earmarks. Instead, let us power up and produce for Alaska and America. We can do this – we’re 50 years old now, and it’s time!
Time to take back our collective sense of responsibility and sovereignty. To honor constitutional principles and remind the Federal Government of our right to access and develop. To maximize development for the people of this Great Land. Let’s harness Alaskan ingenuity to deal with the double-edged sword of high oil prices. We will implement solutions to address outrageous energy costs for our citizens. While at the same time saving and investing the revenue generated by the record oil prices.
Let’s not blow it, let’s capitalize. We will fully fund Power Cost Equalization – $28 million to offset costs. We will match $10 million for Denali Commission and Energy Authority conservation programs. But we need a comprehensive approach to long-term energy plans, not just fiscal “shots-in-the-arm.” I’m appointing an Energy Coordinator, to activate a statewide Energy Plan. We’ll use earnings from a $250 million “Renewable Energy Fund” for alternative projects, like hydro, wind, geothermal, and biomass. These projects cannot even flirt with snake-oil science – they will be real, doable, and economic. Alaska’s plan can lead America toward energy security and a cleaner, safer world.
It is our energy development that pays for essential services, like education. Victor Hugo said, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” It’s a privileged obligation we have to “open education doors.” Every child, of every ability, is to be cherished and loved and taught. Every child provides this world hope. They are the most beautiful ingredient in our sometimes muddied up world. I am committed to our children and their education. Stepping through “the door” is about more than passing a standardized test. We need kids prepared to pass life’s tests – like getting a job and valuing a strong work ethic. Our Three-year Education Plan invests more than a billion dollars each year. We must forward-fund education, letting schools plan ahead. We must stop pink-slipping teachers, and then struggle to recruit and retain them the next year.
We will enable schools to finally focus on innovation and accountability to see superior results. We’re asking lawmakers to pass a new K-12 funding plan early this year. This is a significant investment that is needed to increase the base student allocation, district cost factors and intensive needs students. It includes $100 million in school construction and deferred maintenance. There is awesome potential to improve education, respect good teachers, and embrace choice for parents. This potential will prime Alaska to compete in a global economy that is so competitive it will blow us away if we are not prepared. Beyond high school, we will boost job training and University options. We are proposing more than $10 million in new funding for apprenticeship programs, expansion of construction, engineering and health care degrees to meet demands. But it must be about more than funds, it must be a change in philosophy. It is time to shift focus, from just dollars and cents to “caliyulriit,” which is Yupik for “people who want to work.” Work for pride in supporting our families, in and out of the home. Work for purpose and for action, and ultimately destiny fulfilled by being fruitful. It’s about results and getting kids excited about their future – whether it is college, trade school or military. The Lieutenant Governor and I are working on a plan to make attending Alaska’s universities and trade schools a reality for more Alaskans through merit scholarships.
Infidel to the religion of Obama, Stanley Kurtz writes in the NYPost:
THE seeds of today’s financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity Reinvestment Act – a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.
CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in “subprime” loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.
Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA – and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.
In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions.
Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.
Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.
ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott – an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s mortgage policies.
Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in “direct action” – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a “living wage” law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.
In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an “affirmative-action lending policy.” The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.
IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint using the “community support requirements” of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first “bank fair” at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.
Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank “summit” in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting – for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.
By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott’s program as “affirma- tive-action lending” and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.
And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks “kicking and screaming” into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed – Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were “participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories.”
What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae – which had agreed to buy up the loans. “If this pilot program works,” crowed Talbott, “it will send a message to the lending community that it’s OK to make these kind of loans.”
Well, the pilot program “worked,” and Fannie Mae’s message that risky loans to minorities were “OK” was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.
IT would be tough to find an “on the ground” community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.
When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.
He returned to Chicago in the early ’90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama’s legal services for a “motor voter” case and partnered with him on his 1992 “Project VOTE” registration drive.
In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks.
More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago’s Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation’s board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers – and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.
That committee’s report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama’s organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott’s ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.
MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report ac knowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN – whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.
Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public’s eye. The Woods Fund’s claim to be “nonideological,” it says, has “enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government ‘establishments’ without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship.”
Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?
The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN’s Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.
And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott’s way – ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN’s overall efforts.
In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama’s first campaign for state Senate, saying, “We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.”
Glad to see that more of Stanley Kurt’s research is coming out. The Obama campaign attempted to silence him but he is fighting to get the truth out there.
If this is true, this will get people up in arms. Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times reports:
You know where that very important $700-billion figure came from?
[...]
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Rasmussen reports that only 32% of people oppose the bailout now. Drastic fall from last week.
Bill Kristol in the NYT:
With respect to his campaign, McCain needs to liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her — aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House. McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice.
I’m told McCain recently expressed unhappiness with his staff’s handling of Palin. On Sunday he dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to join Palin in Philadelphia. They’re supposed to liberate Palin to go on the offensive as a combative conservative in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday.
That debate is important. McCain took a risk in choosing Palin. If she does poorly, it will reflect badly on his judgment. If she does well, it will be a shot in the arm for his campaign.
In the debate, Palin has to dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president. She should spend her time making the case for McCain and, more important, the case against Obama. As one shrewd McCain supporter told me, “Every minute she spends not telling the American people something that makes them less well disposed to Obama is a minute wasted.”
The core case against Obama is pretty simple: he’s too liberal. A few months ago I asked one of McCain’s aides what aspect of Obama’s liberalism they thought they could most effectively exploit. He looked at me as if I were a simpleton, and patiently explained that talking about “conservatism” and “liberalism” was so old-fashioned.
Maybe. But the fact is the only Democrats to win the presidency in the past 40 years — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — distanced themselves from liberal orthodoxy. Obama is, by contrast, a garden-variety liberal. He also has radical associates in his past.
I’ve been telling this to anyone who has the misfortune of hearing me. Wewant Sarah Palin the pitbull, not Sarah Palin the chihuahua. The Couric interview was embarassing. We know that this is not the Sarah Palin we fell in love with on that Friday after hearing the Obama Manifesto. They needto uncage the pitbull, give her a gun and let her get her groove back. Anyone who watches her 206 debate performance knows that this woman is intelligent and fully capable of handling herself. This Thursday, Joe Biden is a moose.
This is hilarious. Cary Tennis at Salon laments:
My perspective was, short of Obama being caught on video strangling his children with his own two hands, he had my vote, and thus I had no need to pay attention to all the nonsense that would occur in both campaigns prior to the election.
And then came Sarah. My reaction to her, and the way the Republican Party threw her in our faces, and the pandering and hypocrisy that was behind their decision to do so, was immediate, visceral, and indeed, vicious. I have crossed every line I believed should never be crossed in public discourse — I have criticized not only her policies and her record, but her hair, her personal style, her accent, her abilities as a mother, etc. I’ve also begun to suffer personally and professionally. I bore my friends with my constant tirades against her, and am constantly distracted from my work by my need to continually update myself on the latest criticism, and indeed, ridicule, of her. In my hatred for her, I have begun to hate myself.
[...]
I think what disturbs us about Sarah Palin is that she reminds us of the authoritarian personality. My guess is that she is also an ESFJ, or Extroverted Sensing Feeling Judging type, with a strong preference for sensing. Such a person prefers to acquire her knowledge from concrete objects and places instead of from abstract ideas. This would explain why she thinks being geographically close to Russia is a form of foreign policy expertise.
As an authoritarian type, she strikes us as a person who prefers power to reason. The people running John McCain’s campaign seem to instinctively understand the uses to which such an impression can be put. Perhaps they know better than we do how deeply the American people long to be done with the problem of democracy, to yield to a powerful father-mother pair of authoritarians.
The very thing that appalls us about Sarah Palin — her discomfort in the realm of reason — is her main selling point. This is so mind-boggling that you have to take a minute to let it in. Take a deep breath. Read that sentence again. Face it: Sarah Palin represents what many people want: a retreat from reason; a regression to childhood.
do they hate her really? I think that many with PDS are greatful that the void that will manifest in late January with the end of the Bush administration will be filled. When President Bush decides to take a victory lap around the White House on a Segway, there will be more than few liberals with a single tear falling down their cheek as they will no longer be able to vent their rage.
