“Guilt By Association, And Execution, Too.”
by Eric 'Renderking' Fisk

Thursday, October 9th 2008

Ren's Rants John Sununu is a Republican. For that reason alone he'll be punished come this November. He'll take the blame for this sub-prime mortgage fiasco. He'll be sent back home to New Hampshire without even having the chance to defend himself. He will lose his seat to a woman to whom I briefly spoke to during the Clinton Impeachment mess, who currently comes off as an absolute and total incompetent and who believes that the solution to every problem is to steal what ever nickels and dimes remain in our bank accounts and spend them on social programs and bail-outs that simply won't and haven't worked.. Jean Shaheen thinks she can lie about Mr. Sununu's record while at the same time hitch her wagon to the rising political star of Barack Obama... and a few others who are truly responsible for this mess...

... but I'm getting ahead of myself in talking about the partisan plague that's sweeping the country.

Don't Confuse Me With Facts...

What got me started on this was a brief conversation that I had with a fellow political junkie from the neighborhood from "the other side." I noticed that she was wearing a "Stop Sununu" button. I thought that I would just give her a little jibe since I've known her for a while and we've had some friendly, impromptu debates.

"Why would you want to stop Sununu?" I asked.

"Because he and Bush are responsible for this financial mess."

"Really! How so?"

She started to stammer but couldn't get anything coherent out...

"How can a guy who put forth two bills trying to regulate Fannie May and Freddie Mac and pushed for an end to sub-prime mortgages and mortgage back securities be to blame..." This is really unfair of me since I already started this rant I had read a few things about the bill Mr. Sununu, Chuck Hagel and Elisabeth Doll introduced, the "Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005". I've been actually trying to read the bill and understand it from a non-politician, non-lawyer laymen's point of view (which is like trying to read Greek or Latin with out actually knowing either). So, I have to admit that with all of these facts floating in my head I obviously had her at a disadvantage. When you're dealing with someone who has nothing but tag-lines and emotions, facts always have the advantage.

"I just don't like him and what he, Bush, and the Republicans did to this economy."

"What about your criticism of Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd? Do you have any anger towards them?" She rolled her eyes and gave me the look as if she was angry (I'm sure she was) and wanted me to drop it. Like a gentleman, I did.

But this dialog is exactly what's wrong with this current election season.

Curse Of The Unpopular...

Unless you've been living in a cave on Mars with no access to the internet, print media, television and radio, you know that George W. Bush is the most unpopular President in our lifetime, perhaps more disliked then Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.

I'm not a big fan of George W. Bush. I'm disappointed in his presidency and there were a lot of things that I wish he had done but never bothered to do. There was the issue of illegal immigration and our open boarders. Many of the suggestions made by the September 11th committee still haven't been implemented. We're also still coping with the ever present fear of another terrorist attack while Osama Bin Ladin is still recording speeches that were released and broadcast by al Jazeera.

The popular thing to do is to just blame "Dubya" for everything. It's a popular thing to blame all Republicans. Regardless of your voting record, even if you've never had "face time" with the President, never worked with him on any of his programs or directly implemented his policies, that doesn't matter. If you're a "Republican," even in name only, you're still going to take a hit and lose votes or even the entire election.

Even if you sounded the call about this crisis when it was merely a looming nightmare from beyond the horizon and actually tried to prevent it, you're still going to get the blame and be punished this November... John Sununu said (in so many words) that Fannie May and Freddy Mac's way of doing business - gathering up bad mortgages and bundling them as mortgage backed securities - is a formula for disaster. For that he should be punished by the real culprits of this crime? Makes about as much sense as punishing a whole ethnic group for the financial collapse of a country (think post World War I).

Forget that Mr. Sununu insisted and worked on provisions that would protect tax payers and home buyers, as stated in a recent debate and reported in the Concord Monitor...

"Sununu explained out several provisions that he said made him more comfortable with the rescue plan, under which the federal government will lay out as much as $700 billion to buy up bad debts from ailing financial institutions in the hopes of staving off a credit crisis. Among them are provisions ensuring the program is temporary, that any proceeds must be used to pay down the national debt and that call for the president to prepare a plan to recoup money from the financial sector if the program loses money."

Talking to a staff member on John Sununu's staff about this article, I was alerted to an provision of the bail out a provision in the bail-out plan that Mr. Sununu worked on before it finally passed: Profits from the bonds would go back into the Federal Treasury in an effort to pay the American Tax payer back.

It's all irrelevant for voters who don't care about the facts concerning what Mr. Sununu is doing and has tried to do in the past. All people see is that he's a "Republican," giving people a "legitimate" reason to be angry with him and throw him, with the rest of the "bums", out of office.

(D)Equals "Pass?"

It's also become a popular thing to let Democrats off the hook as the constant drum-beat that this sub-prime mortgage crisis pounds it into people's heads that it's all "the Republican's fault."

The Liberals have it both ways. As far as this past spring, Democrats like Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Finance Services Committee, and Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Banking Committee, were blocking all attempts at any policy that would rein in the bad lending practices. They said earlier (as late as this past July 14th) that everything was fine. Freddie Mac and Fannie May are "fundamentally sound, they are in no danger of going under, they aren't the best investments these days but on the long term stand point they are. I think prospects going forward are very solid."

Sure, they are experiencing a few bumps along the way but everything is sound. Don't worry, everything's fine here... why do you ask?

But since it's self evident now that these financial institutions are at the hub of this collapse, it's now "racism" to criticize their loan programs and policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act (C.R.A.) which forced banks and mortgage companies to give loans to people based on their ethnic backgrounds and not on their ability to pay those loans back.

People like Barney Frank are playing distraction tactics. To critique the C.R.A. is akin to lynching and racism. "The reason why we're in this crisis is because racist Republicans don't want low-income families to have decent homes, or to be able to take part in the American Dream" Liberals cry. [As an aside, isn't THAT racist? Saying that the people who can't afford to pay their mortgages are minorities, and how dare we criticize them because it's not part of their ethnic make-up to pay their bills on time or hold down long term jobs. Now, THAT is racist, the kind of racism for which Liberal Democrats are excused.]

Barney Frank is the architect of this collapsing structure. He was Chairman of the House Finance Services Committee. Even the liberal-friendly press say he's starting to show signs of cracking and he is the recipient of their criticism. Some publications are also going back and seeing how Barney Frank demanded that regulations be loosened despite the warning of the consequences...

Daily News Tribune, MA - Oct 6, 2008: "Frankly Speaking: U.S. Rep defends work, explains bailout," by By Chrissie Long/GateHouse News staff. "According to a 1991 Boston Globe report, Frank backed efforts to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, despite the fact that then-Fannie Mae national spokesman David Jeffers said that such mortgages default at two and five times the rate of single-family dwellings, respectively.

Not only did Mr. Frank not read the writing on the wall, he denied the writing was even there...

From the same article: "Some people foresaw the subprime crisis," Frank said yesterday. "Nobody that I know of foresaw the extent to which modern investment techniques, the amount of liquidity around the world and sophisticated technology would take the sub-prime problem and magnify it throughout the system."

You would think that if Frank was a Republican, people would be calling for his impeachment, criminal charges be filed or at the very least, hung from the highest tree branch. But his challenger Earl Henry Sholley can't even get Frank to a debate. The local media is apparently allowing him to duck

It doesn't matter that this man should have been making sure disasters like this didn't happen - Barney Frank is getting a free pass and not taking his fair share of the criticism and goes unchallenged by most "main-stream media" publications. He's allowed to continue (for the most part) to make his claims that this is all the Republican's fault, that this is the result of the failed policies of the President while ignoring the fact that his own dereliction of duty is a large part of the crisis we face.

... Barney Frank is a Democrat, but angry voters don't care. They'll still vote against Republicans, the party of an unpopular President.

Welcome To Backwards World

Candidates this November will be tried, judge and politically executed not for anything they've done, but because of the party they belong to. Too many voters will march to the polling places with their smug indignation and vote against honest politicians who have worked hard and done the right thing. People will vote against politicians who worked with the other party in a non-partisan manner to get something done for the common good, but that won't matter. Off with their heads because they share the same letter at the end of their name as the current sitting President.

Don't bother going to read what the politicians have said on their websites, don't research their voting records or their press releases, don't confuse yourself with facts since your mind is already made up.

If your a candidate, you don't need any experience and a shady background. You can just say that you hate Bush, you hate Republicans and admit that you have no idea what you're talking about but your passionate hate makes up and working in Government provides "on-the-job" training. Running a campaign is training enough experience, right?

Listen to ads by women like Jean Shaheen about how "Bush's buddies" created this mess. Forget that the incumbent she's challenging co-authored a bill that might have averted this disaster. Be a hipster and just vote for one party because it's so trendy. And since you're going to punish those candidates just because they're "Republicans," why don't we just go to the root of the cause and vote against any candidate who attended the same colleges as George W. Bush... Harvard, Yale... any candidate that was in the National Guard, too.

Many Republicans who deserve to stay in office or at least deserve the chance to serve in office for one term won't because the constant pop-culture main-stream media drum beat. Not just on a national level, but on a local level, too. Inexperience and incompetence is being voted into office this November. How is that going to do anything besides exasperate the problem?

And after Inauguration Day, who will the Democrats have to blame, besides themselves?