So much disinformation, so little time

"But I think it's fair to say that the scandals that we've seen, both legal and illegal, under the current White House and Congress, are far worse than most of us could have imagined," Barack Obama told fellow Democrats with a straight face last winter at a gathering designed "to shine a spotlight on the Republican culture of corruption and highlight efforts to clean up Washington and get back to the people’s business." (Photo unattributed)

“This bill does not represent a new and sudden departure from free market principles as much as it represents an emergency response to congressional actions that have ignored free market principles, and our Constitution, for decades," says Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) in a statement released today [via Ed Morrissey]:

If anyone in Washington should offer their resignation it should be the members of Congress who peddled the fantasy of free home ownership without risk. No institution in our country is more responsible for the myth of borrowing without consequences than the United States Congress.

As much as members of Congress want to find scapegoats, the root of this problem is political greed in Congress. Members of Congress from both parties wanted short-term political credit for promoting home ownership even though they were putting our entire economy at risk by encouraging people to buy homes they couldn’t afford. Then, instead of conducting thorough oversight and correcting obvious problems with unstable entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, members of Congress chose to ignore the problem and distract themselves with unprecedented amounts of pork-barrel spending.

Roger Kimball explains "Who caused 'the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression'” in a must-read Q&A pullout of key data points from this video that names names, including the blusterous House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, who protests "The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it," even as Jeff Jacoby observes "Frank's fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco":

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.'"

There you go again, Mr. Frank. Meanwhile, the unspeakable Speaker of the House seemingly sabotaged her own efforts to lock up enough bipartisan votes to pass the $700 billion bailout bill, angering potential Republican allies with a boilerplate pre-vote finger of blame pointed squarely at "the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system." But the most egregious revelations of recent days concern the trajectory of Barack Obama's early career as an Alinsky-inspired community organizer, as James Simpson at The American Thinker explains in his eye-opening "Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis" [via The Anchoress]:

When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s …

This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy … David Horowitz summarizes it as: "The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. [It} seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

"Cloward and Piven held that poor people can only advance when society is afraid of them," writes James H. Walsh at Newsmax:

By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation’s wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state. Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended [Chicago radical activist Saul] Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government.

… how many voters know that Obama, during his four-year tenure in Chicago as a community organizer, worked as a trainer for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — the infamous ACORN, whose affiliate, Project Vote, is known for voter fraud — the same ACORN from which a mighty mortgage mess has grown.

Was this year's sub-prime mortgage meltdown ACORN's insidious project all along? And what about what Victor Davis Hanson describes as Obama's "Strategy of Preemption," including threats "to go to the courts after the NRA ads, to swarm Milt Rosenberg’s radio station in Chicago to badger guest Stanley Kurtz, or to unleash Missouri law-enforcement on McCain’s campaign ads?" Are these efforts the fruits of Obama's schooling in the intimidation tactics of community organization? So much disinformation, so little time. It's downright Gramscian.

Just stumbled upon from Newsmax: "Former Republican Sens. John Danforth of Missouri and Warren Rudman of New Hampshire are running the McCain-Palin 2008 Honest and Open Election Committee":

Both Rudman and Danforth voiced concern that there is or may be a pattern of registering people who are not entitled to vote, noting that of particular concern is an organization called The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

“We are concerned that ACORN has been connected with Senator [Barack] Obama and that he has ties to it,” said Danforth.

Danforth tells a doubting Colmes of Hannity & Colmes on Fox News this evening that his committee isn't accusing Obama of any wrongdoing and in fact hopes to reach out to members of both parties in a spirit of cooperation. Good luck.

Update: Dr. Sanity reaches out to the inmates of the asylum in the latest Carnival of the Insanities.

Comments

[Kelly]

LGF-lanche??

Good post, Sissie, my head reels at the Cloward-Piven meme. Say it ain't so. Could people be so evil as to desire a complete societal breakdwn?

And that photo at top - revolting!! I feel slimed just looking at those folks.

[Gayle Miller]

There IS evil in the world, Kelly, and the picture at the top of Sissy's post is evidence of same.

Here's my theory - perhaps paranoid but somehow I doubt it. I think the Dems have manipulated things in such a way that this whole thing is boiling over right now in order to distract the "great unwashed" from the inadequacies of the Obamamessiah before the election. Since the electorate is smart enough these days not to fall for "bread and circuses" - then they'll throw gloom, doom and financial fiascos at us for our entertainment.

Yes, I do question their patriotism. I also question their sanity and their ability to think or act rationally.

To quote Dennis Miller: "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong." (But I'm not!)

[Teresa]

"Danforth tells a doubting Colmes of Hannity & Colmes on Fox News this evening that his committee isn't accusing Obama of any wrongdoing..."

Ha - Missouri - Danforth is very likely afraid that if he actually states the facts the Missouri branch of the Obama Truth Squad will break down his door and drag him off to jail.

Of course after KMOV broke the story, they've rather backed off on their threats to free speech in Missouri, but one must wonder.

As for this current mess, which I'm ignoring to the greatest degree possible, (because there's not a damned thing I can do about it) of course it was bound to happen. So far the only good thing has been the refusal to pass that $700 billion spending spree bill that Pelosi wanted. We'll see if things change, but at least for a few days, we've finally seen some people in Congress decide they'd rather be re-elected than pay off Pelosi and company.