Fraud we can believe in

Alex Creel

Following Bush jr's inauspicious election hijack I'm not surprised Democrats are taking precautions, fight fire with fire Obama - the ends will justify the means.

Canon Alberic

Oh give it a break Mel.
Do you really think it is in the interests of the civilisation the values of which you so effectively advocate to support the election of the most frightening union of scarey age and even scarier youth since Claudius and Messalina?

C Powell

Interesting. Will you also have an article on how people who are facing foreclosure are also - apparently - being denied the right to vote? I'm not sure any party has clean hands on this issue but I would genuinely like to know the facts.

David

Melanie was of course all over similar accusatiosn about vote fixing with regards Republicans Bush last time round.

Wasn't she?

Oh.

Janey Woo

That's right, Canon Alberic, let's just clap like sea lions whenever Obama shows his face.

He's only a politician, after all. Why would he have an agenda?

YouCannotBeSerious

When are you going to write about McCain's associations with Cuban terrorists? Or the elevation of Palin to a heartbeat from the Presidency as the sign of a dumbed down society which you normally excoriate? (Winking during the VP debate as if she was on the X Factor, for pity's sake!) Why aren't you talking about Sarah Palin and the Dianafication of US politics. Your hypocrisy is nauseating, if unsurprising. Am just surprised you didn't work in a spurious, negative reference to Muslims into this post. Why don't you leave politics to the grown-ups at the Spectator like Fraser Nelson and Matthew D'Ancona?

ruth

Nice one Mel!

You've taken out two targets in one character assassination with more Sneer than you could
Shake a Snake at!

That's some poison pen you ve got there.

Verity

You can take the boy out of Chicago, but you can't take Chicao out of the boy.

Obama started out as an enforcer.

Steph

C. Powell: Unless you produce the evidence, I have to suspect what you say is mere rumor. Rumor, by the way, I have never heard before this. Did you make it up yourself?

Verity

C Powell - What? WHAT? WHAT?????

In the United States? Which state(s) are so criminally breaching the US Constitution? Have you reported the governors of those states to the FBI?

Are you out of your raving mind?

Huw Thornton

You might be right about this, Melanie, and if there is some villany going on, it should be exposed as much as possible.

All I'd say is that if Obama is in fact a unique mixture of islamist and active revolutionary communist as suggested in your previous postings, these allegations are in comparison rather mundane. They rather lose their shock factor, coming from your blog.

There's so much positive that can be said about the election (and indeed you have previously made very warm comments about Sarah Palin).

Apropos of which.....

That's the first time that I've ever heard a politician compared with Messalina, Canon Alberic. Boudicea, Elizabeth I, Livia, sure - all these are commonplaces whenever a women stands for high public office. If others take up this theme, it will make even the worst conspiracy theory about Obama seem mundane in turn.

If you've got more on this, let's have it! The world will be agog.

Brian O'Connor

Wow! Morrissey is all over this ACORN thing. Here, he provides us with a video segment from CNN on ACORN's shockingly extensive fraudulent activities in one community. http://tinyurl.com/4qy7fg

This is must viewing.

YouCannotBeSerious!

Link here to an article about foreclosure and losing the right to vote

http://www.jewishtimes-sj.com/news/2008/1010/columns/006.html

I have no idea whether this story is accurate or not. Am simply following the modus operandi of this particular blog by cutting pasting willy-nilly from the internet.

logdon

Melanie is not alone. Here you go.........

October 10, 2008
Obama, Acorn & Their Starring Role in the Mortgage Crisis
Frank Salvato

Barack Obama, congressional Democrats and Progressive-Left operatives – with the help of the mainstream media – have done a great job of spinning culpability for the mortgage crisis onto the Bush Administration, congressional Republicans and, in particular, John McCain. This is a notable moment in the history of political spin because as the facts present, Democrats and Progressive-Leftists – not Republicans –are the ones directly responsible for the current financial crisis in which our country is embroiled. At the center of this culpability are Barack Obama and ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

In order to understand how Barack Obama and ACORN are directly to blame for the mortgage meltdown, we first have to understand what ACORN is and how Barack Obama was affiliated with them...and make no mistake; Barack Obama was most definitely affiliated with ACORN.

The Roots of ACORN
From a comprehensive and thoroughly researched piece by Stanley Kurtz in the National Review titled, Inside Obama’s ACORN, we come to understand that ACORN has its roots in the anti-capitalist tenets of the 1960s radical left group the National Welfare Rights Organization. This groups’ goal was to force a radical reconstruction of what they described as “America’s unjust capitalist economy” by forcing the elimination of eligibil ity restrictions for those trying to attain inclusion on the welfare roles, thus creating an overloaded system, a crisis, so as to affect that reconstruction.

Over the years, ACORN morphed its mission into one that champions a diverse set of objectives, all with an overriding goal seated in the tenets of anti-capitalism and the destruction of the US economy. The group targets privately owned companies in their pursuit of unreasonably crafted municipal living wage laws that have literally driven said companies from the areas where jobs are needed. They continue their campaign to eliminate welfare role eligibility restrictions as they crusade to roll back welfare reform. And, in an area directly related to our subject, they actively employ coercive tactics to manipulate financial institutions into abandoning best business practice by affording low-interest loans to unqualified borrowers.

It is important to understand this statement fully; “...they actively employ coercive tactics to manipulate financial institutions into abandoning best business practice by affording low-interest loans to unqualified borrowers.”

In 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. This law requires financial institutions to offer credit, including home ownership opportunities, to under-served populations. Translated, the Community Reinvestment Act forced financial institutions to offer credit – mortgages – to unqualified borrowers. To add teeth to this law, provisions were included to punish financial institutions that did not embrace the horrific business practice=2 0of lending money to those unable to pay it back.

Because of the Community Reinvestment Act, any financial institution that wants to expand or merge – any financial institution that has earned the right to grow because of its utilization of good business practices – has to prove it has complied with the Community Reinvestment Act otherwise the growth move can be blocked through regulation set-up to enforce the law. ACORN, under the guise of affecting “affordable housing for the poor” routinely employs intimidation tactics (both physical and verbal), public charges of racism and threatens to use the Community Reinvestment Act to block business expansion. These actions have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and “organizational contributions” (read: bribes) from America’s financial institutions.

Indisputably, the actions of ACORN, in their intimidation of financial institutions that make up the mortgage banking industry, serve as the chief catalyst for the mortgage crisis and the financial meltdown we are experiencing today. By coercing the mortgage banking industry into lending to those who were unqualified to borrow, ACORN instigated the collapse of the housing market and, as a result, is directly responsible for qualified borrowers – you and I – being unable to secure legitimate lines of credit today.

But how does this relate to Barack Obama?

Barack Obama’s Connection to ACORN
When a young Barack Obama was first starting in his career as a “community organizer,” he caught the eye of Madeleine Talbot, the Chicago chapter head of ACORN. Talbot was so impressed with Obama’s organizational skills in his effort to attain asbestos abatement at a low-income housing project that she invited Obama to help train her own staff in the art of community organizing.

In an article by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN leader and a member of ACORN’s National Association Board, published in Social Policy titled, Case Study: Chicago — The Barack Obama Campaign, Barack Obama is cited as being a key figure in ACORN’s yearly leadership-training seminars. Foulkes also exposes the fact that the much-touted Project Vote campaign which Obama takes credit for organizing was, in fact, in direct partnership with ACORN.

Barack Obama was retained to represent ACORN in a legal action regarding an Illinois law addressing what has come to be known as “motor-voter” voter registration. He was intentionally and specifically sought because of his days working with Madeleine Talbot.

After Obama officially left ACORN and began to craft his political career he tapped into his time at ACORN to field his volunteer staff. Having trained many of the ACORN leaders in Chicago there was a well-spring of enthusiasm for his candidacies throughout the organization, candidacies that include his 1996 congressional campaign, his 2000 State Senate campaign, his 2004 US Senate campaign and today’s 2008 presidential campaign. It should be noted here that Obama sought and received endorsements from ACORN’s political arm for his political contests.

A minimal effort into researching then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama=E 2s pet projects reveals that on several occasions he introduced legislation complimentary to ACORN’s goals including legislation addressing the municipal living wage and the financial sector. And when Obama sat on the boards of the Woods Foundation and the Joyce Foundation he was afforded the wherewithal to direct grants to ACORN, which he did.

Putting Two-and-Two Together
There are many , including HotAir.com’s Ed Morrissey, who will rightly point out that,

“It’s important not to get too carried away with the ACORN connection in the collapse. The real trigger came when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up all of these loans and converting them into securities.”

But a gun doesn’t shoot without bullets and ACORN’s manipulation of the mortgage banking community in securing low-interest loans for unqualified borrowers manufactured the “bullets” that were shot by the gun ow ned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Every crisis begins with a single act but most often that act remains hidden in the shadows of the crisis. It took years to uncover the mechanics of the September 11th, 2001 attacks yet we understood all those years of planning and training in a single moment. Hitler’s rise to power didn’t begin with his ascension to chancellor, it began in a Munich beer hall years before. And the movement that is incrementally facilitating the encroachment of socialist democratic ideology in the United States didn’t start in the 1960s, it started circa World War I.

In the case of the mortgage crisis and the subsequent financial meltdown that has caused hundred-point slides in the stock market in recent days, it started with training people – community activists and their coordinators – how to coerce financial organizations into employing bad business practices by providing loans to people who could never, ever pay them back.

Barack Obama trained Madeleine Talbot’s budding ACORN staff how to organize people to action. He returned yearly to provide leadership-training seminars. And after ACORN employed the practice of coercing financial institution into providing low-interest loans to unqualified recipients Obama served as their legal counsel.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have acted as the mechanism for the initiation of today’s financial crisis, but ACORN and Barack Obama exist as the genesis, the single act that morphed into financial catastrophe for our country and, very likely, the world. To deny this elementary fact is to employ the math that got us into this mess.

And Barack Obama wants us to trust him with leading our country?

Brian O'Connor

Wow! Morrissey is all over this ACORN thing. Here, he provides us with a video segment from CNN on ACORN's shockingly extensive fraudulent activities in one community. http://tinyurl.com/4qy7fg

This is must viewing.

(This is the third time I've tried to post this — the previous 2 attempts apparently failed [I got an error message].)

John Birch

Hey Melanie. Explain as well how Obama is forging the polls as well that show him way ahead? More sour grapes on your part.

Brian O'Connor

Even the New York Times is acknowledging that Obama's campaign is beset by fraud and illegalities. http://tinyurl.com/3nepkg

An analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times this week found nearly 3,000 donations to Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, from more than a dozen people with apparently fictitious donor information. The contributions represent a tiny fraction of the record $450 million Mr. Obama has raised. But the questionable donations — some donors were listed simply with gibberish for their names — raise concerns about whether the Obama campaign is adequately vetting its unprecedented flood of donors.

And to sweeten the pot, there's this: Louis Farrakhan thinks Obama's the Messiah, too: http://tinyurl.com/3wefkh

Wright, Ayers, Pfleger, Farrakhan, ACORN, CAC, Raines, sloppy vetting, etc. . . .

How much is too much? Or is nothing too much?

Mladen Andrijasevic

Things are really bad when even the Jerusalem Post is misleading its readers to help Obama. In today’s editorial the Jerusalem Post writes:

"Anti-Obama bloggers continue to promote the ludicrous idea that he is a secret Muslim or - in the latest fantasy - a closet communist."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017499218&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

This is entirely misleading. The crux of the issue is not whether Obama is a Muslim today, but why is Obama's site denying that he once WAS . There is sufficient evidence to show that he was born and raised a Muslim.

Daniel Pipes writes: "Obama's having been born and raised a Muslim and having left the faith to become a Christian make him neither more nor less qualified to become president of the United States. But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president."

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5544
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5354

N

Mel,
I love what you have to say, but C. Powell is right, both parties have dirty hands, at least you could talk about both parties fairly. Or if you can't do that at least make fun of McCain for being really really old. However, Obama has a lot of skeletons in his closet that need to be shown (being friends with W-Ayers, i wouldn't be surprised if Obama had an actual skeleton in his closet)to show through his lies.
Youcantbeserious, Cuban terrorists really? Proof please. Besides that is what homelandsecurity is for. Obama is more important because he and his "cronies" threaten the inside of our country, not the outside. Are you really surprised at home dumb society is? Have you not seen who the current president is? What about WMDs, we all fell for that one. What about Bill Clinton? Not only was he a pot smoking adulter and guitly of perjury, the current FUBAR economic situation is his fault and still people and the democractic party praise him! That is a dumb society and dumb people.

Brian O'Connor

John Birch wrote:

Hey Melanie. Explain as well how Obama is forging the polls as well that show him way ahead? More sour grapes on your part.

If I understand the process correctly, the poles have a number of "best guess" fudge factors built into them, one of which is based on the number of registrants for a particular party.

As a candidate, the more registrants your party has, the stronger you appear in the poles.

Brian O'Connor

N wrote:

I love what you have to say, but C. Powell is right, both parties have dirty hands, at least you could talk about both parties fairly.

Perhaps . . . but I reject the moral equivalence. It's like saying that jaywalking and rape are equally wrong.

Rape and jaywalking aren't equivalent wrongs, and nothing the McCain or his campaign has done can come close to matching the serial horrors that emerge as we look further and further into Obama and his past.

As Stalin might have said: "One abuse is an outrage; 100,000 abuses are a statistic."

T. Jones

Thank you Brits!!
Our media in the US is just as currupt as Obama and the truth is not getting reported. Keep up the good work!

Regards,

The Yank

Hippiepooter

Can't wait to see the line up of the Obama Cabinet: Bill Ayers - Homeland Security; Al Sharpton - Treasury; Ramsey Clark - Attorney General; Jesse Jackson - Secretary of State; David Duke - Middle East Envoy; Jimmy Carter - National Security Adviser. As Melanie has pointed out, Obama spent 20 years in a black power church and is steeped in hard left activism. A closet racist and closet Communist as President of the United States - just what the world needs! I saw that CNN were even willing to start telling the truth about Obama's lies. This election is make or break for American Democracy.

Verity

T Jones - At The Speccie - more specifically, when you are on Melanie Phillips's blog - you are on a little atoll of sanity in the raging far left dementia of the British media.

On your side of the Atlantic, National Review still has a secure grip on reality, as does Mark Steyn. www.steynonline.com

Also, Little Green Footballs is pretty securely tethered to reality.

Conservative Cabbie

My view, for what it's worth, is that it would be the ACORN scandal and not William Ayers that might derail Obama's campaign. Let Palin go after Obama on Ayers, McCain should hammer him on ACORN.

Dave

Brian: So Obama is a metaphorical "rapist" ?
I mean... really?

Stef

Thank You for exposing what the biased US Media will not. Many have turned to the internet to get the real facts and sadly we have to look to the UK to tell us what our own media will not. People are FINALLY speaking out though. Melanie you should write about the recent "folks" at the McCain/Palin townhall rally who demanded they expose Obama for his connections. It was powerful. One connection that is not often mentioned is Odinga in Kenya. That would be another interesting article. Keep up the great work Mel...the good people of the US need you!!!

field

Melanie, do you apply this principle to Menachem Begin and the people who associated with him?

Or to Tony Blair who did so much to bring murderers and terrorists into public life and power in Northern Ireland?
The fact is that politics is often a dodgy business where people associate with tyrants, terrorists and twisters. That is a sad fact of life.

There are plenty of reasons to do down Obama, but I think this is really a bit overdone.

The truth is that McCain has not shone and the times are favourable to the democrats. Whichever way you cut it, McCain was associated with the free enterprise deregulation wing - and deregulation is not flavour of the month now the ice cream van has crashed onto the pavement, mowing down everything right,left and centre.

Verity

Tony Blair is an appeaser macho-wannabee who wanted to have his photo taken with terrorists.

Verity

Hippiepooter - Nothing for Susan Sarandon? She's not black, but she's as far left as you can get before you fall off the edge of the world and have to be sedated.

American Voter

To logdon: Thank you very much. I shall circulate that excellent piece. As an American, I value my right to vote in free elections and I regard voter fraud as a direct assault on democracy. Those among you who are English and are belittling these facts are a disgrace; ask anyone who has lived under totalitarianism what it is like to be denied any and all rights and then shift yourselves enough to rise up in defence of your own quickly dissipating freedoms through the rule of Socialists and the unelected EU. As to Obama and his active role in ACORN, that is, of course, fully in line with his Membership of, and Candidacy for, the New Party in 1996. The New Party was a Radical Left organization formed to amalgamate Far Left groups and push the US into Socialism by forcing a major political party (the Democratic Party was their choice) to the left. It was an attempt to regroup the forces within the Left with a new strategy to take power by burrowing from within. Obama's campaign team initially denied, and then tried to expunge, all details of his membership and candidacy in the New Party, but were unsuccessful, thanks to this excellent blogger's investigative efforts. Socialism has been a dire failure in Britain and Europe and caused massive destruction of national values, infrastructures and peoples' lives. Every piece of the puzzle of Obama's life, private and public, fits into a concerted effort to align himself with those ideologies most inimical and antithetical to the American people, values and government.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/archives_prove_obama_was_a_new.html

Israel

Verity you posted:

T Jones - At The Speccie - more specifically, when you are on Melanie Phillips's blog - you are on a little atoll of sanity in the raging far left dementia of the British media.

On your side of the Atlantic, National Review still has a secure grip on reality, as does Mark Steyn. www.steynonline.com

Also, Little Green Footballs is pretty securely tethered to reality.

Mark Steyn?!?!?!?

You say that MARK STEYN is based on reality? If that reality is calling Vietnamese people "gooks", who said of the murder victims of Virginia Tech "They're not 'children.' The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and -- if you'll forgive the expression -- men." , and said of Michelle Obama "this is Kim Jong-Il dressed up with a bit of Oprah Winfrey dressing."?

I won't even waste time with National Review or the odious Charles Johnson's LGF.

field

Of course voter fraud is a serious issue. But one thing the USA is not short of is lawyers, courts and lawsuits. There are means of redress. The Republicans have had plenty of time to get their act together on the

Hayward Maberley

Verity,
How can you be so unkind about The Poodle, he who trotted so obediently behind Dubya into the Iraq Fiasco.

Verity

Obama was born where?

Only native born Americans are eligible to run for the Presidency.

Why all this bizarre mystery about Obama's place of birth? If it was within the United States, he is eligible to run for the presidency.

If not, not. Cut and dried. Why so many issues? Born on American soil or not?

Why all the obfuscation that has never been manifest in another presidential candidate ever?

Was he born in the United States or not?

Why all this side show of "copies"? Why not the real certificate?

Has anyone ever seen a birth certificate that proves Obama was born on American soil?

Jack Thursby

Got this in the inbox overnight.

"Something to think about ...
If Barack Obama applied for a job with the FBI or Secret Service, he would be disqualified because of his past association with William Ayers, a known terrorist.

If he is elected President, he would not qualify to be his own bodyguard."

It's a standard bite of electoral cheese.

Normally nagging doubts, and Obama has a much longer list than McCain, have a sobering effect and they take their toll in the polling booth.

There is nothing normal or sober about this election.

Frank P

Jack T
... If he is elected President, he would not qualify to be his own bodyguard."

Bwaaahahahaha!

Then again, it's no laughing matter, as it is becoming more and more likely that he will become the (notional) guardian of the body politic of the West. As for his own bodyguards: a very, very hazardous occupation, I should think! But there will undoubtedly be a queue of nutters volunteering for the post. Louis Farrakhan's outriders can all be transferred for the duration, perhaps?

Thus do civilisations collapse!

Except ... who was it that said America is the only country that went directly from barbarity to decadence without going through the intermediary stage of civilisation? Sounds like something one of them homosapiens arty-farty types would come up with, dunnit?

Talking of which, having seen Simon Sharma's boondoggle across the West of America on TV last night, it's quite obvious that America is a lost cause, as it comprises merely a dust-blown, arid desert with one dried up river, populated only by a couple of descendants of the original pioneering settlers and a wandering contorted, tic-ridden onanistic 'historian' hogging the camera as usual and muttering dire warnings about 'global warming'.

Cut to parched-throated country singer ... "The nights are coooool, and I'm a foooool, without the taste of woorta; cooool cleyar .... woorta!

I'm still spitting the dust out this morning: Whfaww. Is there another cuppa coffee in the flask, love?

These arty-farty homosapiens do get around at our expense, don't they? F*****g leftist misanthrope! Okay, okay, I know he took out a bit of insurance with some brittle and patronising optimism in the final stanzas - presumably to ensure that he got out of the Vegas combat zone alive!

I preferred John Steinbeck's version, as depicted by John Ford and Hank Fonda. Moreover I only had to pay 1/9d to see that, which included also other pleasurable entertainments in the back row, to take one's mind off the miseries of poverty and strife - lust for life will always sort it all out, I suppose. Unless, of course, you're an arty-farty onanistic homosapient documetary-maker whose lust is pretty irrelevant for the rest of us, as it all so ephemeral and pointless.

Frank P

Hayward Maberley

Your response to Verity about the 'Iraq fiasco':

All wars turn out to be ferocious fiascos but this one was started for a purpose and that purpose was fulfilled; it was both justified and necessary; mopping up operations always take a long time, we're still mopping up after WW2 (and probably the Napoleonic wars, too). You have benefitted from the spilled blood of all of them. Despite your claims of being a much travelled pacifist savant, you never seem during your travels to look beyond the end of your nose. Ingrate!

That should wind him up EC!

Roscoe Mendago

Obama is no different than a salesman selling snake oil, and there are buyers galore. What are his qualifications; is he an economist, no, an expert on foreign affairs, no, does he know anything concerning the military, no. Who does he keep company with, who are his friends, anyone normal, someone who isn't a radical of sort, whether it be his pastors, neighbors, political and fiscal benefactors, this guy is not real, he's hiding too much. Oh, he does give a wonderful sounding speech, my this guy sounds so good while saying nothing. Did someone out there just faint, give'em a bottle of water, is anyone an EMT, give the poor person some help, you see, I'm in charge here.

D Gray

It wouldn't matter if Hussian Obama pulled a piece of brown tape of his forehead to reveal a third eye.....he's still going to win,and then God help the free west.

Ann

"the ends will justify the means"

The words of every disgusting tyrant who ever lived. No wonder we hear them from this quarter.

Ann

"How can you be so unkind about The Poodle, he who trotted so obediently behind Dubya into the Iraq Fiasco"

The sneering, dimwitted words of every ignorant lefty airhead. Blair was completely right to join this very necessary war. There is no 'fiasco': it has achieved its aims.

charles soper

Thanks Melanie, these are extremely serious allegations that need airing and testing carefully, far more than Palin's husband unethically using her office to pressure a sacking. Very strange then that one association has hit the airwaves and the other association has not.

I see McCain's campaign is now taking up the refrain (short ad video)

http://www.johnmccain.com/videolanding/acorn1.htm

ndm

Melanie Phillips appears unaware of the difference between registration fraud and voter fraud. Submitting a fraudulent voter registration will not affect the election in any way because no vote will be cast in the fraudulent name. Consequently, it does not matter how many fraudulent registrations are made. Voter fraud, on the other hand, is extremely rare but remains the hardy perennial of a Replican Party seeking to scare legitimate voters away from the polls. In fact, registration fraud does not defraud the electoral process it is a fraud against the organizations like ACORN which pay people to collect registrations.

Adam Serwer has an interesting post at The American Prospect on ACORN. Sewer writes:

The silliest part about the claim that ACORN is secretly trying to steal the 2008 election, other than the claim itself, is the idea that the large number of fraudulent forms submitted in Indiana would never have been turned in otherwise. But, as Adam Doster points out, ACORN is required by law to turn in all registrations, no matter how suspect. ACORN flags the ones that seem problematic to help state officials discern fraudulent registrations from real ones. CNN did not note that the law in fact, requires ACORN to submit voter registrations, even if they're filled out with names like Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse. In my last post, I suggested that the bad forms were turned in deliberately -- this is indeed the case. They were turned in deliberately because the law compels ACORN to do so. (my emphasis)

Serwer updated his post to remind us of the important reason this law exists:

I want to add one more thing for those who are still suspicious of the reason behind the law forcing ACORN to turn in registration forms that appear to be fraudulent. One of the more obvious reasons is that if voter registration groups could decide which forms to turn in, a liberal group like ACORN could simply throw away GOP registration forms and claim they were fraudulent. The law is in place, at least partially, to make sure things like that don't happen.

It is pretty sad that a "writing fellow" at a small American political magazine has a better understanding of the story than a senior British journalist.

The idea that Barack Obama is using voter registration fraud to "steal the 2008 US Presidential election" is absurd - especially given the fact that the daily Gallup tracking polls have had Obama at 50% or above for the last eight days. Melanie Phillips should take to heart the message John McCain reluctantly put forward yesterday - respect.

Verity

Ann - Quite. The war was well-advised and is successful, although more work is needed to consolidate the gains.

Strange how the left so often resorts to illiteracy to nail down imagined points. Capitals, I believe, are the green ink of cyberspace. Why, for example, is 'The Poodle' capitalised? Why is 'Fiasco' capitalised?

Why does this windy airhead to refer to the President of the United States with such familiarity as "Dubya" - a family name to distinguish him from his father, President George Herbert Walker Bush.

I wish, though, the Reps hadn't run McCain and instead had run Governor Jeb Bush, a true conservative, and married to a very fine Mexican gal. For sure he would have pulled the Spanish vote, and it would have been good for N American relations. (Literally.)

Also, I prefer not to have senators running as they have zero administrative experience and they don't have the prestige of governors.

texasmamma

Thank you Ms. Phillips. Now, do you think you can find a mainstream media outlet (CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, Time, Newsweek, etc.) in the U.S. that will run this story? If you could, certain Americans would really appreciate it -- it's so frustrating what is being kept from the voting bloc.

Verity

Does anyone actually read all the densely-written, closely argued, randomly capitalised points the ticks make?

I don't.

Frank p

ndm

Go spill your bucket of whitewash elsewhere!

Verity

Another little gem:

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/5minute_arguments/alone_again_nat.php

After you have enjoyed the song, some other little 'You Tube' gems will appear. All part of the exposure that is now gaining traction. The rattle of skeletons is rising to a crescendo. Fitzgerald's on the job. He's slow but thorough. It's sphincter time Barack! As we say over here, your aristotle should be doing the ol' half-a-crown/sixpence, half-a-crown/sixpence routine!

I hear that Fitz is allergic to juice.

Israel

Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis

By David Goldstein and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height vrom 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

_ More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

_ Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

_ Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

The "turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into 2007," the President's Working Group on Financial Markets reported Friday.

Conservative critics claim that the Clinton administration pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make home ownership more available to riskier borrowers with little concern for their ability to pay the mortgages.

"I don't remember a clarion call that said Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster," said Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

Fannie, the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., don't lend money, to minorities or anyone else, however. They purchase loans from the private lenders who actually underwrite the loans.

It's a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.

This much is true. In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale into the secondary market that eventually reached this number: 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families.

To be sure, encouraging lower-income Americans to become homeowners gave unsophisticated borrowers and unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers more chances to turn dreams of homeownership in nightmares.

But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending. And at the height of the housing boom in 2005 and 2006, Republicans and their party's standard bearer, President Bush, didn't criticize any sort of lending, frequently boasting that they were presiding over the highest-ever rates of U.S. homeownership.

Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.

During those same explosive three years, private investment banks — not Fannie and Freddie — dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie, according to a number of specialty publications that track this data.

In 1999, the year many critics charge that the Clinton administration pressured Fannie and Freddie, the private sector sold into the secondary market just 18 percent of all mortgages.

Fueled by low interest rates and cheap credit, home prices between 2001 and 2007 galloped beyond anything ever seen, and that fueled demand for mortgage-backed securities, the technical term for mortgages that are sold to a company, usually an investment bank, which then pools and sells them into the secondary mortgage market.

About 70 percent of all U.S. mortgages are in this secondary mortgage market, according to the Federal Reserve.

Conservative critics also blame the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods.

Congress created the CRA in 1977 to reverse years of redlining and other restrictive banking practices that locked the poor, and especially minorities, out of homeownership and the tax breaks and wealth creation it affords. The CRA requires federally regulated and insured financial institutions to show that they're lending and investing in their communities.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote recently that while the goal of the CRA was admirable, "it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — who 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."

Fannie and Freddie, however, didn't pressure lenders to sell them more loans; they struggled to keep pace with their private sector competitors. In fact, their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, imposed new restrictions in 2006 that led to Fannie and Freddie losing even more market share in the booming subprime market.

What's more, only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.

These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.

In a speech last March, Janet Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, debunked the notion that the push for affordable housing created today's problems.

"Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans," she said. "The CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."

In a book on the sub-prime lending collapse published in June 2007, the late Federal Reserve Governor Ed Gramlich wrote that only one-third of all CRA loans had interest rates high enough to be considered sub-prime and that to the pleasant surprise of commercial banks there were low default rates. Banks that participated in CRA lending had found, he wrote, "that this new lending is good business."

Ronnie

Perhaps if Verity had the brains and the required attention span to read more she would not now be writing such obvious nonsense as:

'The war was well-advised and is successful, although more work is needed to consolidate the gains.'

and

'I wish, though, the Reps hadn't run McCain and instead had run Governor Jeb Bush, a true conservative, and married to a very fine Mexican gal. For sure he would have pulled the Spanish vote, and it would have been good for N American relations. (Literally.)

(Dear Spanish-speaking voters. My wife is Mexican, that's all you need to know. See you on 4 November. Jeb.)

Also, I prefer not to have senators running as they have zero administrative experience and they don't have the prestige of governors.'

Help me up...

I prefer governors as presidential candidates because they usually have a better dental plan. Much more important than if they have any clue about the US, the wider world and the people in it.

Hayward Maberley

Mr Pulley,
I do not get wound up, as so many of the posters on this site seem to do. I like to think that my responses are considered and based on reason and fact. This will be a long post as I attempt to respond to your short one.
Btw you should read Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks. Just a short take on what Ricks has to say. concerning the run up to the Fiasco. Rummy ignored the US military saying do not go there . Then there was the fact that the folks at Foggy Bottom had put together plans to rebuild/restore infrastructure and services damaged in Iraq during the earlier attack, invasion and as a result of the sanctions. As well they had plans for the restoration of civil governence and the legal system. All this was pushed aside by Rummy saying that the people who had been working on these plans were too close to the subject ie they were specialists, who had knowledge of Iraqi/Arab/Kurdish culture, language, expertise on the Middle East etc. But for Rummy , Dubya and the PNAC crew in the White House it counted for nothing. So Rummy took over!
Any way Bush apparently along with Blair had consulted the Lord, who said it was OK to visit “shock and awe” on the land of Iraq. Oh so Tanakh/Old Testament!
When talking to senior members of the Bush Administration Ricks was both stunned and concerned that there was no real idea of the cultural, ethnic, political, racial. and religious differences in that area. Arabs, Iranians, Kurds all just Muslims and dark skinned and wearing stuff on their heads?
Arabs bringing to the West the ideas and philosophy of the Greeks ?
Sunni or Shi’i but also Alawite, Christian, Druze, very tribal still?
Iranian culture stretching back over 3000 years, think Shiraz grapes, miniature painting, Rumi, mostly Shi’i but also Christian, Jewish, Manichean?
Kurds pale skin , blue green eyes, Salah al-Din founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, mostly Sunni but other religious beliefs as well?
Well the pig ignorant in the Bush Administration knew nothing of this and went gung ho with the “shock and awe” followed by the illegal invasion and occupation.
“Mission Accomplished”? Oh by the way that war that I mentioned in a post to Mr Cabbie the lasted 40+ years was in the USA. Any guesses?
I am not sure as to how I may have benefited from the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars. I might add most of my ancestry is Irish, so who knows what might have happened there. Anyway I am not so sure that Napoleon could ever have invaded Britain due to the lack of transport vessels to cross the channel. In WWI there was no chance of the Central powers ever invading Britain, it was a struggle concerning the control of Europe and attempts at colonial expansion. WWII was definitely a threat to Britain, Europe and the world at large , for if Hitler had managed to defeat the USSR and obtained both lebensraum and resources the world would be a different place entirely and not very pleasant either. But the USSR, with the other Allies assistance, fought the Germans to a standstill and then rolled them all the way back to Berlin. In the Pacific the US beat the Japanese in a gruelling and costly campaign back though the islands all the way to Japan. As well the Australians hung on in New Guinea and turned things around there.
However prior to this it is well to remember that many in the USA and UK had thought that the Hitler fellow was doing a good job. JFK’s father Joe thought so as did Henry Ford and Watson of IBM, whose machines helped the trains run on time to the concentration camps. Most of the ruling/upper class in Britain also thought he was doing a good job.
What was that good job? Suppressing dissent, trade unions and dealing with the "Reds" and Jews by shipping them off to camps. There is evidence to say that the ex-king, the Prince of Wales, would have been quite happy to have been a Gauleiter of Britain under Nazi rule. These then were the leading appeasers. And I always smile when people like myself who opposed the Iraq Fiasco are called appeasers and Hitler is mentioned in the same breath. They do not know their own history.
I am no ingrate here. I am grateful to all those who fought against the Axis powers and the sacrifices they, their families, including my own, societies and countries made in that effort. I too would have fought against the Axis Powers.
I have looked well beyond the end of my nose as you so curiously put it. and now come to the Iraq Fiasco. Carried out under false pretences for reasons other than all those excuse/lies given. The BIg Lies were WMD/45 minute launch/ Dodgy dossier/ Niger yellowcake/aluminium tubes/al Qa’ida/a regime change that was not supposed to be on the cards. But the truth is that it was all about oil, the control of it, ensuring that it continued to be marketed in US$ and not the Euro as Iraq was commencing to do. If you have read the PNAC manifesto and the following declarations on US military power you would know that the hegemony is premised on the US having unlimited oil supplies for its military forces.
Fine that we may hold different opinions, that is the good thing about the relatively free societies in which we both live in. If you wish to turn to abuse rather than debate that is for you to decide.

Verity

Frank P - That song is too sad. I couldn't concentrate on the message.

Water

Alex Creel I can appreciate your opinion, though it is tantamount to foul play.

David has a fair point, but that shows an element of objectivity on her part does it not, she has also sung in praise of Obama on prior occasions.

YouCannotBeSerious has certain points, though; it doesn’t detract from the matter at hand surely.

Huw Thornton oct 10 4:37, I am warmed by much you have said, surely you must be joking with regards to the Cuban terrorists? Though, a question if you will, if the facts do hold true this case (with regards to the ill oak seed) surely is a cause for concern, is it not? After taking into consideration what logdon has put forth it is certainly just as pressing as Mel’s prior posts.

Mladen Andrijasevic fantastically put, though worrying.

Brian O'Connor (@ 5:56 on the 10th) allot of fudge I agree. Though dave (@8:18pm) raises a point, regarding the rest, though I guess it’s a bit of art nu-noir, maybe.

Hippiepooter I don’t know about him being a closet racist (honestly genuinely I could not say, but politicians are rather adapt liars at times) but I join you in an abundant degree of reasonable doubt, with regards to his past associates and what this bodes. Though I don’t paint him guilty.

American Voter you have me thinking of T paine set on fire around my ears.

Past agreements flagged Verity has a point “Has anyone ever seen a birth certificate that proves Obama was born on American soil?” but do we normally wave them about ;). Before this is misconstrued I'm not looking to lock horns Verity you style is just missed cybernetic deprivation, a nasty affliction.

Ann has a point, though not always something I would agree with, on occasion the words of a dictator indeed.

Ndm though I will not join you in attacking the host, your argument is well structured I admit.

Israel the Neil Cavuto quote, very cutting nicely highlighted.

Water

Anyway, web time over, for now, money’s such a thing. Catch you later.

charles soper

Plot thickens:
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/7231

Obama team by its shifts and changes is looking worried by this.

Frank P

Hayward

I'm so glad I didn't wind you up. But I do seem to have released all that suppressed rage that was bubbling away inside you. Lighten up me old flower, you'll do yourself and injury; we're all here for the craic but trying to do a Will & Ariel Durant in a single blog comment is going it a bit! :-)

Frank P

Well! Not a moment too soon -and probably about two months too late - Paul Dacre, eminent obermeister of the Daily Mail has at last deigned to give house room to stuff that has been emitting from our mate Melanie on this blog for what seems an enternity (see Melanie's side bar of published articles "America's first far-left raddical President"). The MSM has mounted the rostrum! Allelujah!

I can only assume that there some harrumphing, maybe even some spitting a gouging and perhaps even blood on the carpet of the hallowed halls of Derry Street W8 as she broke a few arms and insisted that at least the British Public should have some of these facts revealed by one of its most popular newspapers. Now perhaps the rest of Grub Street will have to follow. I note that even now, the Tony Rezko connection is missing from the equation, but perhaps that is because his case is virtually sub judice. So if Obama wins the election at least a large chunk of the UK populace will know, like us, that the American President is a close associate of Marxists terrorists, agitators, Gerrymanderers and downright crooks; but it may have to wait a bit longer to see him prosecuted by Pat Fitzgerald, who I hope will prepared to take on an incumbent President.

We shall, as they say, see! Let us hope that we don't all go the plughole before it comes to fruition.

Thank you Melanie and, I suppose, thank you too, Mr Dacre.

Dan

I don't understand. What good are bogus registrations, unless there are a large number of people who are willing to attend at polling stations to cast votes? Presumably in a given locality where there are many such registrations, dozens of people would need to be involved, attending at different polling stations to impersonate the fake voters who are on the list. It seems awfully risky. Isn't it more probable that there are many phony registrations, but few actual instances of illegal voting?