Barney Frank, architect of the housing crisis, has a breathless piece in Politico arguing that Republicans ought to embrace Reagan and learn to apologize for America’s misdeeds. Curiously, though, Frank has never apologized for his own, political and personal.

As his evidence, Frank mentions the inexcusable internment of the Japanese Americans and how Frank allegedly worked with Reagan to give the Japanese-American victims of internment monetary redress.

Frank leaves out, of course, how his party was behind the internment in the first place. He ignores the culpability of fellow progressives like Governor Earl Warren and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who helped to execute that shameful act. Earl Warren’s biographer, G. Edward White, writes that Warren was “the  most visible and effective California public official advocating internment.”

“The Japanese situation as it exists in this state today may well be the Achilles heel of the entire civilian defense effort,” Warren wrote. It was nonsense, but enforced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who is something of Frank’s ideological hero.

But there is no such thing as a national apology because there is no such thing as collective guilt. There is only individual guilt and individual shame and Barney Frank is shameless.

When will Barney Frank apologize for the role he played in the financial crisis?

Peter Wallison, member of the Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission, notes Frank’s involvement:

Barney Frank was the principal advocate in Congress for using the government’s authority to force lower underwriting standards in the business of housing finance. Although he claims to have tried to reverse course as early as 2003, that was the year he made the oft-quoted remark, “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing.” Rather than reversing course, he was pressing on when others were beginning to have doubts.

…

For most of his career, Congressman Frank was one of the leaders of the effort in Congress to meet the demands of activists like ACORN for an easing of underwriting standards in order to make home ownership more accessible to more people. It was perhaps a worthwhile goal, but it caused the financial crisis when it was done by lowering mortgage underwriting standards. In the end, it was a colossal policy error by Congress and two presidential administrations.

Indeed in the aftermath of the Great Recession, Frank blamed capitalism, not his meddlesome economic policy, for the economic failures he caused. “This is equivalent to what FDR had to do . . . to save capitalism from its own excesses,” he said.

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From Newsbusters:

George Washington was the father of our country.

Eh! No big deal. Barack Obama is better…at least in his own mind. Such was the laughably absurd claim of President Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday. What? You didn’t see it? That was because 60 Minutes conveniently left it out of its broadcast. If you want to see Obama engage in this latest bit of over the top braggadocio you can only see it at the online 60 Minutes Overtime which has a video of the entire interview. You can catch Obama’s excessive praise of himself at the tail end of the interview starting with Steve Kroft’s question just before the 55 minute mark:

KROFT: Tell me, what do you consider your major accomplishments? If this is your last speech. What have you accomplished?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, we’re not done yet. I’ve got five more years of stuff to do. But not only saving this country from a great depression. Not only saving the auto industry. But putting in place a system in which we’re gonna start lowering health care costs and you’re never gonna go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick. Making sure that we have reformed the financial system, so we never again have taxpayer-funded bailouts, and the system is more stable and secure. Making sure that we’ve got millions of kids out here who are able to go to college because we’ve expanded student loans and made college more affordable. Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Decimating al Qaeda, including Bin Laden being taken off the field. Restoring America’s respect around the world.

The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

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January 1776 Thomas Paine first declared these words as he provided inspiration for a Revolution. The Revolution.

“The time has found us.”

The words leapt off the page to me as I read Common Sense for the umpteenth time, but it seems like I had skipped past that part in previous readings. I can’t recall that phrase meaning so much to me before.

Paine was one of America’s first, and best journalists. Who out there in the media today could fill his shoes in time of great need?

Paine used this phrase in the context that there was no better time than the present to fight the Revolution. The size of the colonies, the resources of the land, the mood of the people and the feeling that a Power greater than them all was dictating their actions led Paine to conclude that this was not a battle to be left to generations yet to be born, that it was a battle to be fought in the present. So it was. An under nourished, outnumbered, ill equipped army of Colonialists took the words of Paine to heart and we can all be grateful today that they did.

Without reservation, I repeat the words of Thomas Paine today, “the time has found us.”

I would encourage you to read Common Sense and put it in the context of this day and you will find parallels a-plenty. While nobody thinks Paine saw our day (he had enough going on at the moment to occupy his time) there is almost a sense of prophecy as you read his words.

While traveling this great nation for nearly three weeks leading up to the 2010 elections I went coast-to-coast, 35 cities, to document and report from Tea Party rallies. I found an attitude and devotion towards the principles of our founding that was absolutely inspirational. Like in Paine’s day, these are Americans who want only to choose for themselves their futures, instead of having a monarchy dictate it for them. After reading Paine again, I believe he would have found this current administration, and perhaps even previous administrations, as ones that were not dissimilar to what he found in his day in Great Britain.

Today we have a government that looks towards what they say is the common good of the people, when their actions only serve a few elitists while trashing the rights of the individual. Or, put another way, the perceived good of the masses outweighs the Liberty of each of us. Of course, the monarchy and elitists always ignore the fact that the lessons of history tell us that when governments of any nation larger than what you will find in the suburbs of LA tries to control its people that way—disaster is the eventual outcome. It never turns out good. Paine understood this perfectly and his words leap off the pages at us today.

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I sometimes wonder if the opinion writers for the Washington Post let anyone read their articles before they get published. The main stream media at one point prided itself for its “layers of editors and fact checkers,” but they seem to have disappeared. I say this because, every once in a while, I come across an article so deaf to its own irony that I need to stop and wonder. I don’t mean to say that I don’t expect a misrepresentation of facts, the building of straw men and a dozen other logical mistakes in the writings of ideologically compromised “journalists.” It’s just the absolutely unbridled transference that I would think that someone in those vaunted layers would maybe dare to say, “uh … about that.”

Such is the feeling I got when reading Richard Cohen’s latest screed in the Washington Post. I hope you’re ready for this one, it is pretty laughable. The GOP is a cult. You need to take a pledge to join up. Well, no, not exactly, but certain interest groups want you to promise to agree to their causes to get an endorsement. That’s totally like joining a cult, except it isn’t. For the sake of entertainment and to see how oblivious to irony these people are we’ll take a look.

Cohen has to make a silly jab at the memory of Ronald Regan to start things off.

“It is not enough to support the party or mouth banalities about Ronald Reagan …”

It is true there are those in the Republican Party who would use President Reagan’s memory as a political tool without actually believing in any of the principles that made the GOP the party of Reagan. However, the majority of Republicans do not “mouth banalities” about Reagan; they hold the truths that he espoused to be the bedrock upon which the country stands.

What are the pledges that have Cohen so up in arms?

No increase in taxes and any closing of loopholes would be matched by other tax cuts. Right, you can now run screaming into the woods as the mad cultists of the GOP come for you. Just not for your money.

The pro-life pledge is next on the list of bugaboos for Cohen. GOP candidates who want the endorsement of the Susan B. Anthony List must agree to oppose abortion including the opposition of judicial nominees who might decide against the wholesale slaughter of the unborn. Can you smell that? That’s the irony burning. If I could remind the Washington Post editorial staff it is the Democrat party who have for years been using the pro-abortion stance as a litmus test for judges. It is the radical feminists of NOW who have raised the concept of abortion to an inalienable right. A right that trumps every other consideration.  A politician can be the biggest womanizing, sexual harassing scum bag, but if they are a pro-abortion advocate Democrat then they’re good to go. That’s a Pro-Hypocrisy stance if I have ever seen one.

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The face of TV and politics changed forever on this date in history. It was 50 years ago this evening that John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon held the first of their 4 debates. It was clearly the most remarkable of their debates—perhaps the most remarkable of all presidential debates.

Kennedy was seen as calm, cool and collected on TV. He was well tanned and healthy. Nixon was fighting illness, he refused a request for makeup and looked sweaty and worn out. Those who watched the broadcast of the first ever televised presidential debate declared Kennedy the winner, those who listened on the radio gave the nod to Nixon. Thus, the political world changed forever.

70 million people watched first of the Great Debates that night that was simulcast on each of the network.  More than half of the voters who watched on TV said that the debates influenced their decision on who to vote for in 1960.

Still, in spite of his performance, Kennedy won by only 112,000 votes and there were serious questions about voter fraud, especially in Illinois where under the Mayor Richard Daley the phrase was coined, “vote early and often.” (more…)

The arrest yesterday of ten Russian “moles” here recalls World War II and the late 1940s in the United States when so many Left-duping Soviet agents were embedded in our government that they almost took over the White House.

That’s right, the White House.

We know this now because of the Venona project. the secret operation that enabled us to intercept and read Russian coded messages. It was kept secret until the late 1990s. Also, the breakup of the Soviet Union enabled scholars to learn more from previously closed Russian archives. As the recent arrests show, the Russians are still at it.

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In watching countless hours of debate over “healthcare” rarely, if ever, do I hear the U.S.  Constitution mentioned in the discussion.  I was speaking at event recently when a very eloquent and entertaining doctor got up and spoke of the dangers of this bill – to her industry and the American people. Agreed 100% with everything Dr. Daliah Wachs said. She knocked it out of the park and used humor and brilliance. We need people who understand those specifics, and she does. I’m no doctor, but I do know our Founding Documents. Following her speech I stood up and said, “I don’t like the thing because it’s not constitutional!” The crowd went crazy.

The Constitution resonates. The Constitution, when used properly, connects with the American people. We’ve spent 100 years running away from this inspired document, it’s long past time that we began our sprint back toward it. (more…)

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a reader feedback opinion editorial from reader Stan Isaacs that is as outlandish as it is indicative of the disregard for the American process that liberals in the Old Media all too often exhibit. It is proof once again that tradition, law, and any effort at legitimacy is wholly outside a liberal’s field of interest. Winning is all they care about, voters opinions and the rule of law be damned.

What sparked Mr. Isaacs’ interest is when he somehow stumbled upon the fact that the number of U.S. Supreme Court Justices is not set in stone in the U.S. Constitution. We now have nine justices but in the past have had fewer. What intrigued him is that the number of justices fluctuated because of politics. “Political issues accounted for the changes,” Isaacs gleefully reported.

In keeping with these “political issues,” Mr. Isaacs lit upon the ideal way to help Obama finally push his left-wing agenda. He advised President Obama to add three new justices to the SCOTUS, justices who will mindlessly adhere to the grand vision of the age of Obama and will rule accordingly. This is necessary, Isaacs thinks, because the court has proven an impediment to Obama’s grand socialist design. Worse, Congress has balked at Obama’s wholesale destruction of America and has resisted his attempts to turn America into a weaker, less free version of Europe. Issacs, you see, demands a recount. (more…)

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville

In part one we discussed how there are only two forms of government. In part two we discussed the history of those two forms. Now we’re going to discuss how the BG (Big Government, aka statist) types have infected our political system.

We’ve all heard the sordid history of Communism and hard socialist countries, which are all totalitarian dictatorships. Nations like North Korea and Zimbabwe are economic basket cases which have famines and moribund economies; police states in which human rights are non-existent. Cuba keeps its citizens prisoner and rations food. These are just a few examples of what happens when BG systems are taken to their extremes.

Human beings operate mostly out of self interest. BG systems allow an elite class to have complete control over every aspect of the public’s lives. Those who love power love to abuse it. (more…)

President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was notable for many reasons.  First, it is not often that you hear such petulance from a sitting president of the United States – complaining about not receiving applause from your political opponents is simply ridiculous.  Second, it is not often that a president directly lectures the American people – it failed when Jimmy Carter tried it in his infamous “malaise” speech, and it failed last night when President Obama told us that we needed to man up and follow him to glory.  Comparing his agenda’s stall to Bull Run, Omaha Beach, Black Tuesday and Bloody Sunday, and calling on Americans to “again … answer history’s call” is foolish and self-aggrandizing.

What’s worse is telling us that he is the spiritual embodiment of our collective strength:

And what keeps me going – what keeps me fighting – is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism – that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people – lives on.”  I couldn’t help but shake my head in amusement when he told us that “It lives on in the struggling small business owner … it lives on in the woman … it lives on in the 8-year-old boy in Louisiana … it lives on in all the Americans … [it] lives on in you, its people.

Quoting the Broadway version of The Lion King is not profundity.  It is silliness: (more…)

Steven Greenhut has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about how public employees unions are destroying California’s budget and economy.

Greenhut begins by noting that with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, California is losing its “productive citizens” to other states but is still saddled with an economy killing surfeit of public employees unions that “drive costs up and fight to block spending cuts.”

Greenhut goes on to report that the unfunded pensions that California is stuck with has increased by 2,000% in the last decade because of the overweening power of the unions.

Approximately 85% of the state’s 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

That is absurd!

Greenhut goes on to offer some hope that some Californians are beginning to learn how bad the unions really are, but I am not so sanguine. And even if California is just starting to “get it,” the problem isn’t just in California but in every state in the union, as the following chart shows: (more…)