Article: What's "truth" got to do with it?

What Republicans did manage during their 12 years in power was to impeach President Clinton, interfere in the Terri Schiavo family affair, pass irresponsible tax cuts, and a Patriot Act that ran rough shod over the United States Constitution's civil liberties protections.

One of presidential aspirant Republican Senator John McCain's top economic advisors is a fellow by the name of Mark Zandy. On October 15, Mr. Zandy spoke with Knowledge@Wharton (University of Pennsylvania's extraordinarily prestigious business school) The video of the interview can be viewed here.

But what is more interesting, at least insofar as all the spinning the Right has been doing, trying to put the blame on the Democrats, can be found on page 151 of his book, Financial Shock. There, Zanday writes, "President Bush readily took the home ownership baton at the start of his administration. To reinforce this effort, the Bush administration put substantial pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their funding of mortgage loans to lower income groups. They [FNMA & FHLMC] had been shown to have problems during the corporate accounting scandals, and were willing to go along with any request from the administration. The Bush administration set aggressive goals for the two giant institutions, which they met by purchasing sub-prime mortgage securities. By the time of the sub-prime mortgage financial shock, both had become sizeable buyers."

Later in the same book, Zandy goes on to say, "

"The congress in 1994 [the last year under Democratic control] passed the Homeowners Equity Protection Act, giving the Federal Reserve the authority to regulate sub-prime mortgages. Mr. Greenspan refused to use it. Democrats in Congress were worried about increasing evidence of predatory lending pushed the legislation, pushed the Fed, but they were rejected."

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As shown conclusively by Mediamatters.org, the nonpartisan - Although the organization, by reporting more egregious misreporting transgressions by the Republican favored major media, does seem to favor the Democratic Party candidates, this may be true because the GOP-media is just so target rich - organization dedicated to accuracy in reporting by the media, among the things I find so incredibly amazing and frustrating is how the McCain campaign can say just about anything, and not one member of the major media bothers to fact-check an allegation or aspersion or promulgation.

Here we have as pure as 72-virgins, 100% absolute evidence, evidence, that by the way, is advanced by a top advisor to the McCain campaign, and by the unspinnable fact of who really was in actual control of all three branches of the federal government, that the current financial crisis is the puppy of the Republicans having at last become full grown and vicious. And still they try to rewrite history, a history that is theirs and theirs alone, using whatever threads of rotten rags are available.

Here's the dilemma the Republicans find themselves in: Either Mark Zandry is a flat out liar, or he is terribly, terribly mistaken. Either case becomes additional manifest evidence that John McCain, once again, has exhibited the most horrendous of poor judgment by retaining Mr. Zandry as one of his top economic advisors. If Zandry is wrong, and the Dems were the primary players who dropped the sub-prime ball, what the heck is he doing advising McCain? If Zandry is right, what is the McCain campaign doing, trying to smear the Dems that his own advisor says are among a few of the few heroes in this miserable saga? Â

Of course, as so many "facts" never seem to be brought from behind the curtain, for example, while McCain was blasting Senator Obama for alleged long ago efforts on behalf of Fannie and Freddie, few in the media bothered to notice that McCain's own campaign manager, Rick Davis, had been being paid lucratively as an active lobbyist by Fannie and Freddie through August, why should we expect to locate a thread of integrity from a Republican?

You have the direct links that source this post. You have the direct links to videos that source this post. You have a direct book and page reference to the source of some of my comments. What you're missing is any link to anything that might provide evidence there is more than a mote of GOP integrity to be found anywhere.Â

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