Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to do some more to protect poor, helpless Americans from the evils of “markets” and “contracts.” Their interventions have worked great so far!

The program will be offered to people who are at least 90 days behind on their payments, according to government officials. The goal will be to modify the mortgage - most likely by reducing the interest rate - so that the monthly loan payment is no higher than 38 percent of the borrower’s monthly income.

Watch as the federal government, with a wave of its hand, saves a few hundred thousand of us from ourselves. If only I’d known ahead of time that a mortgage contract is not really a contract, if enough people agree to bad ones. I could have gotten a $400,000 home! Magic!

Apparently living in a home you cannot afford is one of those new universal rights Congressional Democrats invented. Though Barack Obama did a bang-up job blaming the burst housing bubble on President Bush, the problem’s been brewing for decades. Who among current Congressmen is to blame? Barney Frank (D-MA) sits near the top of the list, but don’t worry! He’ll keep his committee powers and one of these days the government will figure out how to cram an inherently broken concept down the market’s throat:

Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that “these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis.” When the White House warned of “systemic risk for our financial system” unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Once we get our current center-right president out of the White House and make way for the most liberal member of the Senate, maybe we’ll get past this backwards concept of anyone paying for anything without Washington’s help and supervision.

Congressman Boehner,

Congratulations on your election to a 10th term in the United States House of Representatives. As a current resident of Hilliard who was born and raised in Miami County, it’s reassuring to see another Boehner victory approaching 70% when the GOP in central Ohio has been on its heels for the last three elections. I can only imagine how discouraging it must be to watch the conservative ranks thin around you because of losses both in conviction and at the polls.

It’s a sad state of affairs when, after being routed in the Presidential election by the most liberal member of the Senate, we’re stuck rooting for Ted Stevens and waiting for a recount to keep Al Franken out of Washington. It’s ridiculous that we can scarcely hope the national media will do anything the next four years besides provide continuous in-kind assistance to the cause of Barack Obama’s re-election. With the Democrats so close to a filibuster-proof majority and the media moving ever more shamelessly to the left, there is little room for error in either house of Congress.

I hope and pray that you’ll continue your role as a happy warrior for lower taxes, individual freedom, and traditional American values. While it’s obvious that an inability to present and promote conservative ideals is a weakness that extends far beyond President Bush himself, you’ve been one of few exceptions in the short time I’ve followed politics. The cause of conservatism needs you now, as it did in 1994. Remind those who would forget that bigger government is not better government.

Keep your nose clean and your message clear, as the Democrats in Washington - so quick to decry divisiveness and negative politics - leave no stone unturned and no words untwisted when it comes to silencing dissent. Keep your head up as President Obama pushes ever more dependence-producing entitlements, citing a mandate for “Change” that would knock our founding fathers right out of their powdered wigs. Continue to be an example by your faith in God and the Constitution; continue to be a thorn in the side of Nancy Pelosi, for whom bipartisanship means cooperation with the progressive agenda.

I realize you’re well aware of the portions of this that make sense, but this is mostly a therapeutic exercise anyway. A lot has changed since I was a student in Mr. Worth’s class at Miami East High School, helping cover George W. Bush’s first inauguration for the Troy Daily News. There is much good work to be done. Thank you, Congressman, for all your efforts to date — America needs your principled leadership and consistent conservatism.

Godspeed,

Jason A. Hart

Congratulations to Steve Stivers in OH-15. It’s nice to see someone I voted for get elected. I’m also very happy to see the Issue 6 casino deal fall on its face.

We’ll see how these last four Senate seats shake out. It’ll be a huge day for Unilever, makers of Vaseline, if they all fall Democrat. It’ll be a terrible day for the rest of us.

So Chairman Obama broke an early campaign financing pledge, and then rigged his website to accept fradulent donations. So his voting record is well to the left of the electorate. So he’s spent decades supporting racists, terrorists, and garden-variety America haters with his time, money, and words. So his plan for a recession is to soak the rich and broaden entitlements for “the middle class.”

So what? Have you heard the man talk? Have you seen how Presidential he looks?

Mark Steyn points out at The Corner that the residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire - 100% of whom apparently vote at midnight in each presidential election so the rest of us can ask “where the heck is Dixville Notch?” every four years - favored Obama, 15:6. Steyn comments about what this may foreshadow.

Mark is missing the bigger picture: in the past two presidential elections, 100% of the voting population of Dixville Notch was 26 people. It’s now 21. The village’s population has dropped over 19% in just four years! I can only conclude that National Review’s self-described Resident Demography Bore has been swept away in the uplifting tsunami that is Obamania. Shoot, at this rate Dixville Notch will be devoid of native citizens around the same time as much of Europe! Hopefully they’ve got a few Undocumented Americans filling in, doing jobs Dixville Notchers won’t do.

But seriously… I hope and pray that as the rest of our results come in, we see a majority of Americans who don’t want all the miserable things an Obama-Pelosi-Reid leadership would yield, and are prescient enough to vote accordingly.

Barack Obama is not a socialist, because Barack Obama says so:

“I don’t know what’s next,” Obama, the presidential candidate, said at an outdoor rally. “By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

This is not a duck.

But… um…

It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

Although the media’s revealed the dark secret that Joe Wurzelbacher is not a licensed plumber, the fact remains that Joe got Obama to drop the mask in a more succinct fashion than he has throughout the general election campaign. Even without this quote, what would you call Obama’s healthcare plan? Or his frequent attacks on a reduced capital gains tax as “billions of dollars for big oil,” or his promises to give “tax cuts” to people who don’t pay income taxes, or his demonization of deregulation?

so · cial · ism

–noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

Barack Obama, global diplomacy dilettante, is too big to limit himself to canoodling and cooperating with domestic extremists. Can a presidential candidate campaigning for Change We Can Believe In spend twenty years as a member of a racist, America-hating church? While funding Chicago groups tied to ACORN and a Weather Underground nut? And still, amidst all the hustle and bustle, travel to Africa in support of a socialist loon in his father’s native Kenya?

Yes, he can!

Initially, Mr. Odinga was not the favored opposition candidate to stand in the 2007 election against President Mwai Kibaki, who was seeking his second term. However, he received a tremendous boost when Sen. Barack Obama arrived in Kenya in August 2006 to campaign on his behalf. Mr. Obama denies that supporting Mr. Odinga was the intention of his trip, but his actions and local media reports tell otherwise.

Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama were nearly inseparable throughout Mr. Obama’s six-day stay. The two traveled together throughout Kenya and Mr. Obama spoke on behalf of Mr. Odinga at numerous rallies. In contrast, Mr. Obama had only criticism for Kibaki.

On what important topic has Barack Obama been right? He’s hobnobbed with crazies overseas, while vocally opposing leaders friendly to America. He’s supported Bill Ayers in his efforts to further transform education into anti-capitalist, anti-American indoctrination. He’s supported ACORN as they’ve helped cripple mortgage lending and defraud the electoral system.

Shouldn’t the public be more familiar with these facts, given the far leftism of Obama’s record? Obama wants to play Robin Hood with tax policy, further penalizing success in a stuttering economy. He continues to oppose the wildly successful troop surge in Iraq, claiming he’s got a plan to exit the country without harming our interests. His moral standards for going to war might seem like something other than a shell game if he’d acknowledge that Iraq pre-invasion was something other than a Middle Eastern Switzerland. He’s so far out there on abortion it makes Planned Parenthood seem moderate.

There’s a reason all of the links in the preceding paragraphs are from outspokenly conservative National Review: few “balanced” news outlets can be troubled to criticize Obama’s checkered past or far-left positions as anything but an aside. Are conservatives a broken record in this regard? Sure, but there are lots of grooves in the Barack and The Extremists LP, and an apparent shortage of turntables at the big city papers and national TV networks.