Also you can tell it isn’t Rickles… by the way it completely fails to be funny.

We’ve got a full plate for this edition of The Claw, and I’m pretty sure y’all know what the top story of the week has been. Tuck that napkin into your collar and grab your knife and fork. Let’s dig in!
Teddythedrunk……

Heres a different perspective and it has nothing do with whos in the minority.

That’s Barney Frank’s story, and he’s sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by “bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector,” Frank said; the country is in dire straits today “thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best.” And that philosophy goes “back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, ‘Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.’ ”

In fact, that isn’t what Reagan said. His actual words were: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.

Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing Wall Street has its share of private-sector culprits — many of whom have been learning lately just how pitiless the private sector’s discipline can be — they weren’t the ones who “got us into this mess.” Barney Frank’s talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn’t wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so – or else.

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and “redlining” because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to “meet the credit needs” of “low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods.” Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this “subprime” lending by authorizing ever more “flexible” criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.

All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. “Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor,” the Fed’s guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as “valid income sources” to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.

As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn’t take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. “What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?” I asked in this space in 1995. “Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today’s self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?”

Frank doesn’t. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that “these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis.” When the White House warned of “systemic risk for our financial system” unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Now that the bubble has burst and the “systemic risk” is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: “The private sector got us into this mess.” Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.”

But being funny can be counterproductive. I ask myself, is he causing people to laugh out of his silliness, OR are they basically agreeing with him?

That said, Dean was interviewed the other day on PBS (liberal) TV.
I mean this guy is something, a piece of work.

He is a doctor..married to a Jew. He is not Jewish.

Our Torah prohibits marriage to a non-Jew. Enough said!

Well, he claims his children are being brough up Jewish.
Okay, our religion comes from the mother..so maybe he’s right?
I wonder if they were bar mitsvahed? Are they kosher? Do
they observe the Sabbath and holidays? Do they fast? Do they
ahere to the 613 laws of Moses? Do they study Torah and Talmud?

Dean likes a govt sponsored health plan. He knows that the blue dog
Democrat are good for health care reform. Wowowo?

Dean says the economy is improving…(see the stock market rise).

Dean wants competition between the govt plan and private industry.

Sure, and I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge cheap.

I spoke to a friend about the IRS and how it is the worst
agency in the country ( over 15% of taxes due are never paid
yearly ). The agency is feared worse than the Gastapo. and for
good reason. Thousands of properties are seized each year
under their “silent” or not so silent lien. Hundreds of thousands of
levies are served, in bank accounts, receivables, salaries.

People are told, even those unemployed..”pay or die, I don’t care where
you get the money”. “We will break your knees”.

Homes are taken right out from under delinquent taxpayers…sold
at auction for pennies on the dollar. Reps are treated worse
than the Taliban. Who cares where the taxpayers live?

Mr. Dean..you are not funny. You are a disgrace.

Hey guys, read the latest about Afghanistan. The Taliban
allowed Al Qaeda to roam at will in the USA..and attack the WTC.

Therefore, we must fight them for decades..to show we mean business.

While Iran has 2,000 more centrifuges..on the road to 50,000.
That’s 10 nukes/year folks…to hold as leverage over our only M.E.
ally, Israel, and US. While Obama plays with his toys.

I guess it’s fitting that the states with the worst schoools vote the most GOP. Knowledge and GOP voters are mutually exclusive.

JMJ

Rickles was probably being tongue in cheek here, because I doubt he’s that stupid, but it’s really sad how many Americans really believe that Chris Dodd And Barney Frank, both in the triple-branch minority until 2007, well after all the causes of the financial meltdown occured, somehow “caused” the financial meltdown. It just goes to show how incredibly ignorant so many Americans really are. You’d just have to be a total moron to believe that Dodd and Frank “caused” the “financial meltdown” in any way. Just. Plain. Stupid.

JMJ