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Sept. 16, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:31
September 16, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
It's another exciting, fading summer spectacular.
Straight ahead for you from me and all of us here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
As always, we will get the calls sometime in the third hour.
Just kidding.
800-282-2882, email address, LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
Discouraging polling data all over the place for Obama Biden.
And the talk continues to percolate out there, ladies and gentlemen.
Started here, started by me, of Biden being replaced on the ticket sometime down in October.
I keep hearing little whispers about this.
I don't know how likely it is, but there are people talking about it.
And the people talking about it are on the Obama side.
Now, in Ohio, let me set up Ohio for you just to show you the Palin impact and to once again demonstrate for you the impact of McCain's campaign making a definite turn to the right with some glitches, but still we'll take it.
Ohio.
After 2006, there was no way the Republican Party, McCain, anybody, was going to win Ohio.
The governor there, Taft, left office in scandal, 20% approval numbers or some such thing.
A member of Congress went down to tubes in the Abramoff scandal, Bob Ney.
Ohio was written off by the Republicans.
Now McCain leads in Ohio in a bunch of polls within the margin of error.
He's like up three in Ohio, and you want to be up in the margin of error rather than down in the margin of error.
But there's another poll that is even more fascinating, public policy polling, and I'm not sure PPP, but I think this outfit's very Democrat-oriented.
Listen to a couple highlights from their poll.
McCain and Obama had been tied in last month's Ohio poll.
White voters who had been undecided are breaking strongly for McCain, where he had an 11-point lead with white voters last month.
His lead is now 18.
The Republican nominee has also greatly improved his standing among independent voters.
He has an eight-point lead with them now after Obama had a 17-point advantage in August.
Do you realize the turnaround there in independent voters?
McCain's up eight after Obama had a 17-point.
That's a 25-point shift in one month in Ohio.
What is it about the one month?
Dare we say, Sarah Palin.
And this is why the left continues to mount smears against her.
The Palin campaign yesterday, by the way, released all the memos and documents with this Trooper Gate thing.
And it is, not only is it exonerating, it makes you wonder how this guy lasted as long as he did, but the drive-bys are not going to report any of this.
The drive-bys are not going to report any of the damning information on Obama.
They're not going to report any of the exonerating information on Sarah Palin.
It is time to destroy her.
You know, this is, it's, well, those of us who have played professional sports, particularly football, it's down to the nutcracking time here.
Let me just be, let me just be wide open out there, folks.
This is pedal to the medal.
This is rubber meets the road time now.
Dean Debnum, the president of public policy polling, says there is troubling.
This is a troubling trend for Obama of undecided white voters in many of the swing states moving into McCain's camp.
He's going to be in trouble if he can't get that turning back in the other direction.
One factor that may be helping McCain to move up in the polls is his selection of Sarah Palin.
43% of those surveyed said her presence on the ticket made him more likely to vote for Cain, while just 30% said the same thing about Biden.
There is a significant gender gap in Ohio right now, Obama leading by five points among women, but trailing by 16 with men.
Which that's the all-important number there, as well as these independent voters and white voters.
I'm just telling you, if Obama's not up 10, 12 points going into this, it's all academic.
Despite what anybody wants to say.
Ladies and gentlemen, over the course of many sterling broadcasts over the course of many years, I have constantly told you to look at the Democrats and the media and the American left in this way.
Whenever there's good news for America, it's bad news for them.
America wins in Iraq, bad news for the Democrats.
America's economy goes up.
New jobs, wages go up, bad news for the Democrats.
Consequently, when the economy appears to go in the tank or when there's some statistics out there that say the economy is headed to the tank, Democrats are happy.
Remember Dick Gephardt back in the, what was the early 2000s when the stock market was dropping and when the bubble hit, I think in 2000 itself, the market down, every 100-point drop, he said, we pick up a seat in the House.
They were ecstatic.
They're happy.
We have just the latest evidence of this in two audio soundbites from CNN's Anderson Cooper 180.
First soundbite is David Rodham Gergen, who says this about Obama.
But what happened over the weekend with the economy and the bottom falling out of the financial markets?
And we've been saying for some time on this program, this is the worst financial crisis since the Depression.
Alan Greenspan said on Sunday, the worst economic situation he's seen.
It seems to me that there's a real turning point now that that momentum on McCain's side is likely to fade, and there is the opportunity for Obama to seize the momentum back on his side.
An opportunity for Obama to seize the momentum on the backs of what these people think is going to be the next depression.
What they are hoping is the next Great Depression.
That was backed up by Candy Crowley.
Anderson Cooper said, Candy, no doubt, very quickly on the campaign trail, obviously played a big role today.
You anticipate the days ahead, issue number one, it's going to be front and center.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, listen, just as foreclosures were showing up on B17 or in the real estate section, along comes this horrific headline out of Wall Street.
I mean, this is what they wanted.
They believe, of course, that the economy is one of their strengths and that they can paint John McCain as George Bush.
This is what they wanted.
The Obama campaign wants this.
The Obama campaign wants you suffering.
They want you worried.
They want you panicked.
I offer this not as anything earth-shattering from the Democratic National Committee's CNN.
It's just evidence.
It's just the latest bit of evidence that they're hoping, and thus they're in the process of talking it all down.
This next is unreal.
Joe Biden was on today's show talking with the hostette there, Meredith Vieira, who asked him what specifically would your tax plan do to boost the economy?
Our tax plan would take that tax cut of another $130 billion that John wants to give to people making over $250,000 next year, not let it go forward, and give it to the middle class.
The very people who desperately need it to stay in their homes, to buy food, to take care of the gas to fill up their tank, to be able to go out and buy a toaster to the employed people.
To go out and buy a toaster.
Joe Biden, Obama will give you a toaster, Along with a rice cooker left over from the supply in Cuba that Fidel Castro failed to give away to all of his people.
Obama is going to give you a toaster.
Look, as I said, ladies and gentlemen, it is a clear drive-by media gearing up for this October surprise.
It's going to be, I think they're hoping for multiple October surprises.
But this phony trooper issue in Alaska is their focus now.
First of all, this trooper still has a job.
Sarah Palin fired the official that she had appointed.
He was an appointed position.
He was in the process of undermining some of her budget proposals and other things.
He was doing his, I'll tell you what this trooper gate's all about.
I'm going to tell you exactly what it's all about.
It's about the good old boys of Alaska being upset that a woman had upset the apple cart, got rid of Murkowski, got rid of the other Republican opponent in the primary.
This is all about the good old boys of Alaska saying, we're not going to sit here and be run by a damn woman.
We're going to take care of them.
We're going to take this woman.
That's all this is.
And of course, this guy's working with it.
Doesn't matter when the boys don't like the girl, Democrat and Republican boys will line up, and then they'll fight each other later after they get rid of the girl.
And that's exactly what is happening here.
This is pure sexism in Alaska on the part of these old boys trying to get rid of Sarah Palin.
And she didn't put up with it.
And she didn't bend over and let them have their way.
She got rid of this guy.
It's amazing he hung on as long as he did.
In fact, this whole thing, she released the emails and some documents about this yesterday.
A clear case of insubordination is not just this clown is running around tasering 10-year-olds.
He was in clear violation of his responsibilities, disobeying her agenda items.
But of course, all the media reports have taken what the disgruntled fired official and his lawyers saying, and they're reporting that as fact.
The media had no intention here, folks, of explaining to the public all the Democrat connections and efforts that are going on to turn this into an October surprise.
No problem.
We're up to the task.
Those of us here in the new media, they're just laying back and they're getting ready to regurgitate whatever the Democrat State Senate hack Hollis French has to say once he finishes his investigation.
Timed to be released just prior to the election, five days before the election in November is what this guy is very openly, honestly saying.
They are desperate battleground states.
I'll show McCain in the lead within the margin of error and way up in Florida.
Huge lead in Florida.
But he's turned it around in Colorado, turned it around Pennsylvania.
I mean, none of this was supposed to have happened.
None of this was supposed to have happened.
Now, folks, I don't know how many of you watched that football game last night.
I don't know how many of you have heard about, because I'm coming up with a football analogy here.
I don't know how many of you have heard about or happened to see San Diego at Denver on Sunday afternoon.
We are heading out of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter of this campaign.
We are in a relatively even game.
We have made great strides since the first quarter.
We have come back and we have wiped out the lead, and we're essentially tied, but up in the margin of error.
So in military operations, football games or what have you, politics, outcomes can never be assumed.
The same applies to this campaign.
Every battle must be engaged and you engage them to win them.
This matter up in Alaska is hanging around.
The enemy, the other team, plans to use it.
We need to be ready for it.
We need to nuke it before they finish with their investigation, before they put out the PAP that they're going to put out.
We need to make sure that when they throw that bomb, when they run that play, that everybody's seen it, that everybody's heard it, and that nobody is going to believe it.
And when the news hits, as presented by the drive-bys, that the vast majority of people in this country are going to have already heard about this and are going to doubt the drive-bys, not believe them.
You crush the opponent.
You don't let the opponent back in the game.
And this is not naysaying, and I'm not trying to get into an incorrect characterization here.
This is common sense.
It's based on historical and political experience.
It's based on knowing the opponent.
And we know who the liberals are, and we know how they operate in and out of the media.
We know that the Daily Cause and these kook fringe liberal websites are going to mount the most outrageous lies about Palin and her family, which they already have.
All of that will be accepted without question by the drive-by media.
Meanwhile, none of Obama's work with Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dorn.
By the way, I learned something today about these two.
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn in the late 60s were both presented rings from the North Vietnamese.
Ayers got his in Canada.
I forget where Bernadine Dorn, they're married.
I forgot where she got hers, but the rings were made from U.S. aircraft shot down by the North Vietnamese.
You think Jane Fonda was bad?
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, the mentors of Barack Obama, received rings for their anti-American work.
And in fact, the Cubans allowed Bernadine Dorn to establish a Students for Democrats Society operation based out of Cuba.
So these rings for their fingers made from U.S. aircraft shot down over North Vietnam.
Bill Ayers, when he received his ring from the North Vietnamese in Canada, had to leave the room in tears.
He was so moved by the gesture.
He said that he realized he was living in evil, the United States, that he was in the belly of the beast.
It wasn't just 40 years ago that Bill Ayers tried to blow up some buildings.
It was 40 years ago that he was moved to tears with the gift of a ring from the North Vietnamese made of U.S. aircraft shot down over North Vietnam, moving him to tears.
And Obama says, well, you can't hold that guy engaged in this stuff 40 years ago.
So he's still engaging, still has the same mindset about his country.
These people are desperate.
That probably means they will make mistakes.
When they make mistakes, are going to expose them and exploit them.
But don't let your guard down.
Despite all of this polling data, despite the fervor, you know the liberals live and breathe this stuff 24-7.
We all have lives.
At the end of the day, we take a couple of three hours now and then to enjoy little league or soccer or child hockey or what have you.
And sometimes we even spend time with our spouses rather than girlfriends and boyfriends.
And we get back to it eventually, but we also have real lives.
These people live and breathe this stuff 24-7.
They plot and scheme.
I am convinced that when they dream, they telepathically are able to share their dreams with each other so that when they wake up in the morning, the battle plan already happened while they were already asleep.
They never, ever go away.
In fact, there's a story out there today on some blog.
I'm going to get to all this in great detail.
There's a story out there today about how violent and vicious it's going to be if Obama loses.
It's going to be worse than when Kerry lost because nobody on the left really liked Kerry personally, but everybody loves Barry.
And if Barry doesn't pull this off, they're already thinking.
A lot of them are immersed in negativism now.
A lot of their side's immersed in pessimism and talking about getting rid of Biden, talking about how rotten it's going to be if they lose, promising all kinds of fireworks if that happens.
So you sit tight.
We got to take a quick timeout here in EIB, obscene profit timeout.
We'll be right back after this.
I'm watching Senator McCain.
I don't know where he is.
He's doing a campaign appearance right now, and he's bashing Wall Street regulation and this sort of thing.
And he's doing a good thing.
He's demanding an investigation.
You know, where is the investigation of all of the individuals involved with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?
Did a little bit more research.
You would not believe the extent to which Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae existed to prop up liberal Democrat politicians and their favored agencies and organizations and PACs.
It's just stunning.
Obama is number two.
Chris Dodd is number one.
Hillary ranks pretty high up there as well.
But they better be careful here because it is clear.
You know, we started yesterday talking about all this.
And the thing that's going on here with the financial markets and the housing market, this was not the result of a failure of capitalism.
This was a result of too much government involvement.
Government gets involved in this stuff, uses these instruments for their own pleasure and their own survival.
And when things go south, they blame capitalism, say we need new regulation.
Investors Business Daily today with a couple of great editorials on this.
I'll get to them in just a second.
One of them really takes it to the Clinton administration for getting involved in the whole process of making sure that people who could never pay back a mortgage were given mortgages in the first place.
Even Robert B. Reich, the former labor.
In fact, grab audio soundbite number 17.
Grab 70 because this is Reich.
And this is.
In fact, I'll tell you what I want to do here.
Grab number one.
Carly Fiorina was on David Gregory's show on MSNBC last night.
And Gregory said, is it inconsistent to say that McCain believes in more regulation and federal bailout and still talk about belief in free markets?
I think you are confusing John McCain's positions by painting it as hands-off free market laissez-faire.
I think that has been perhaps true of the Bush administration the last four years in terms of a wild, wild west with no regulation, but it is definitely not what John McCain believes.
I think the better model for John McCain is Teddy Roosevelt, who believed that there was a robust role for government.
And John McCain has consistently believed there is a role for government.
A role for government is to make sure that institutions are accountable and transparent.
But he also has said that Fannie and Freddie, frankly, shouldn't exist as government entities.
That the role to support the mortgage market is not something that the federal government and the American taxpayer should guarantee.
Now, most of that's right on the money.
But there's something in there that is off target.
Why bash Bush here when all of these regulations and all of these screw-ups originated with Democrats, when Democrats have their hands in the till on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?
Now, I understand they've got to distance themselves from Bush because the Democrats are running out saying McCain is just another four years of Bush and so forth.
But this is a gratuitous attack on Bush, and it would have been better aimed at Democrats.
I'll give you examples and let you hear Robert Reich explain why when we come back.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, calm and cool, soothing, yet tough and penetrating.
Here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Robert B. Reich on the MSNBC last night slips up here and tells the truth that Democrats and Greenspan were responsible for the experiment that gave houses to people who cannot afford them.
Question, were conservative Democrats part of the problem here?
In the latter years of the Clinton administration, when I was not there any longer, I should add, there was an attempt by Alan Greenspan and Bob Rubin and a few others to deregulate financial markets.
And they did.
They split commercial banking off from investment banking.
And many people will say, well, that was the beginning of the problem.
And then, of course, in 2003, 2004, Alan Greenspan reduced short-term interest rates to the point where, you know, every single bank wanted to lend money.
I mean, if you could stand up straight, you could get a bank loan because there was so much pressure to get that money out the door.
Money was so cheap.
So, yes, there is some responsibility on Democrats, some responsibility on Alan Greenspan and the Fed.
Now, notice here that the Labor Secretary wants to distance himself from any of this.
And a little code word, conservative Democrats.
Yeah, Bob Rubin, conservative Democrat.
Alan Greenspan, conservative Democrat, right?
He slipped up.
The point is, all of this started back in the Clinton administration.
You can find it, and it's not just Robert B. Reich saying it.
There are others saying it too.
I'm looking at the Obama campaign and all of this, folks.
I'm watching.
Obama is right now saying that McCain doesn't believe in regulating the financial market.
McCain just got there saying he wants to investigate him for crying out loud.
But where is Obama?
He's not saying we must build a 21st century regulatory framework.
That's what got us into the problem is more and more government.
And he's going to illustrate the fact that he wants to get more and more investment.
He doesn't understand what he's talking about.
Do you realize he hasn't the slightest clue?
There is a story.
Obama is taking his teleprompter to rodeo appearances.
He's not going to go anywhere without that teleprompter.
Now, how many of you have been to a rodeo and seen somebody speaking out there with a teleprompter?
And they're doing this because they don't trust him.
They have to keep him on message.
When he's without that prompter, he wanders all over.
He's simplistic.
You know, I think this entire Democrat campaign is just simplistic on the subject of energy.
What is their solution?
Blame big oil.
On health care, blame the insurance companies.
On Wall Street problem, blame Republicans.
Not enough regulation.
In the meantime, Obama doesn't have an even rudimentary understanding of how this stuff works.
He didn't understand the capital gains tax when Charlie Gibson asked him about it.
He has no fundamental understanding of some of the most important institutions that have led to this nation's greatness.
All he has is an anger about them, a disrespect for them, a distrust of them because of how he has been educated.
And to listen, Obama, now he will change bankruptcy laws so families stay in homes.
What?
So people who do not have to pay the loans back still get to stay in the house?
Is that what you mean?
I'll make our laws work for working people.
You already did that.
You already came up with a bunch of laws that allowed working people who couldn't afford to buy houses to buy them.
And now look where they are.
I'm telling you, folks, when these Democrats start telling you, you're going to work for you, run for the hills.
Because what they mean is they are going to work for themselves.
Now, about Carly Fiorina, just a couple words here.
She said here on MSNBC last night, I think you're confusing John McCain's position by painting it as hands-off free market laissez-faire.
I think that has been perhaps true of the Bush administration in the last few years in terms of the wild, wild west, in terms of no regulation, but it's definitely not what McCain believes in.
Now, I like Carly Fiorina.
I'd have never met her, but I like she presents herself well on the McCain campaign well, but this is a disgrace.
This is a disgrace that she either doesn't know or doesn't have the presence of mind to tell the truth in this appearance last night.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been Democrat-controlled and run entities since their founding.
Democrats have made tens of millions of dollars running them, and they have greased the palms of leading Democrats, including Obama.
The opposition to reforming them has come from congressional Democrats and former Clinton administration officials.
It has been Republicans who did everything they could to try to get some regulation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they were beaten back by the Democrats at every turn when they attempted to try it.
This gratuitous, and now those are the facts.
This gratuitous attack on Bush is unnecessary.
Bush is not the enemy right now.
They're running against Obama.
They are running against Democrats.
And it's not good to promote McCain by embracing the lies about a current sitting Republican president.
It's disloyal.
It's dishonest.
She owes Bush an apology.
She has totally mischaracterized him as a wild west, no regulation cowboy.
He was involved in trying to re-regulate these things.
Bush has been big government regulator in many ways.
I understand what they have to do.
I understand what they have to do.
They have to distance McCain from Bush because Obama and Biden are now back on this tack that it's just four more years of Bush.
But this is what bothers me about this.
I can't turn on a dime and buy into this dumping on Bush as a way to promote McCain because Bush isn't on the ballot.
Bush is not running again.
Bush is not the enemy.
He is not disliked in a personal way by people who are going to vote for McCain.
To say Bush is not supportive of regulation is just not true.
Supported lots and lots of it.
This isn't about free markets.
As I said yesterday, we're living in a dream world of people who think that this is a laissez-faire free market.
To not use the opportunity as one of McCain, she's a senior economic advisor.
You know, she ran Hewlett-Packard.
She's got a tremendous resume of business achievement and success loosened.
The woman is a dynamo.
But to not have enough information at hand to explain how the Democrats were essentially in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both as executives and in Congress, it was Democrat.
Two of the former CEOs of Fannie Mae are working on the Obama campaign as economic advisors.
Franklin Reigns and a guy named Jim Johnson.
To not know the history of efforts by Republicans to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and then take Gregory's scenario that this was a Bush and free market failure.
Good Lord, folks.
We spent the whole day yesterday explaining how the free market had nothing to do with this.
This is a result of government getting involved, and now the very people who screwed this up now run it totally.
There's not even the impression of some private sector ownership of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
This disappointing.
The enemy is Obama and his literal lack of understanding and inexperience in all these matters.
And for that matter, Biden's too.
If you find it necessary to distance yourself from Bush, do it on something other than where the Democrats are a prime target.
They are sitting ducks on this.
You can tell the people the truth.
You can educate them and inform them from the bully pulpit of a campaign.
It's not too complicated.
It's just a shame out there.
In fact, let's look at San Francisco Chronicle, which is where Carly Fiorina lives.
Story by Carolyn Lockhead.
It might be Lockheed.
I'm not sure.
It's H-E-A-D on the end there.
Obama needs a sister soldier moment.
This piece, the thrust of this piece, is that Obama should rip the Democrats who protected Fannie and Freddie and allowed this mess to happen.
Listeners, this is Carolyn Lockheed.
Now, you have to assume here that we're not talking about a rock-ribbed conservative journalist here.
Obama has a golden opportunity with the U.S. financial system falling apart at the seams, which it's not falling apart at the seams.
Have anybody ever heard of E.F. Hutton?
Where are they today?
They don't exist, snurdily.
They went belly up.
Remember the commercials when E.F. Hutton speaks?
Well, where are they?
These things happen all the time.
These investment banking firms go south all the time.
It's not the first time this has happened.
Everybody's historical begins with the day they were.
No, we're not teetering on the edge of a depression.
We still haven't had one quarter of down economic growth.
The consumer price index is plummeting, meaning inflation's plumbing.
Oil's at 92 bucks a barrel.
The one thing that had people all upset, gas prices, pretty soon they're going to be down the $3 range again.
At any rate, we're not falling apart at the seams.
Congressional, but let me get back to our piece here.
Congressional Democrats were and remain the leading defenders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, promising to resist efforts to shrink the companies now under government control and sell off their assets.
Democrats had plenty of help from Republicans, to be sure, but it was mainly conservatives who have been warning for more than a decade that the public risk private profit model was a disaster waiting to happen.
Yes.
How in the world can you have a so-called private sector entity, Freddie MacFannie Mae, that's owned in part by the government and then say it's private sector?
You can't.
If Obama were to use the financial crisis to rise again above partisan orthodoxy, he might shake people out of their party ruts that they're fast falling into.
He would have to do so in a way that people understand, borrowing from the master, Bill Clinton, Obama's unwillingness to take on his own party is his weakness and McCain's strength.
Now, San Francisco Chronicle there, Carolyn Lockhead, but she inadvertently, as does Robert B. Reich, lays the blame squarely at the feet of Democrats.
Why in the world can people in San Francisco understand this?
And Robert Reich and McCain's leading economic advisor want to blame Bush for this.
Damn.
Okay, we are back.
Michael Rushboe now having more fun, as always, and a human being should be allowed to have the real culprits in this meltdown.
Barack Obama, the Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market, but if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it.
Let me give you some of the details here from the Investors Business Daily editorial.
It was the Clinton administration, and we have Robert B. Reich backing this up on television last night, obsessed with multiculturalism that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making.
Robert B. Reich just confirmed this last night on TV.
It was either that or face stiff government penalties if you didn't loan to these people.
The untold story of this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids, the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority home ownership.
And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but predatory.
Saying this is that the very people that designed the program that leads to all of this mess now get to blame the private sector and they're put back in total control and charge of it.
Yes, the market was fueled by greed and over-leveraging in the secondary market for subprimes vis-a-vis mortgage-backed securities traded on Wall Street, but the seed was planted in the 90s by Clinton and his social engineers.
They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.
It was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.
As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Reigns took the helm at 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.
Can I translate that for you?
Franklin Reigns was a Treasury employee, some sort of cabinet secretary of the Clinton administration.
He ends up at Fannie Mae and pays himself $100 million from 1999 to 2005.
And they finally had to get rid of him because the scandal could not be contained.
Democrats prop this up, Carly.
Bush didn't do any of this.
Other Clinton cronies, including Jamie Gorelic, patted their pockets to the tune of another $75 million at Fannie Mae.
Gorellic again.
In the end, Fannie Mae had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk, but it was too little, too late.
Reigns had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant countrywide financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America.
Hello, Mr. Chris Dodd, number one receiver of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
At the same time, the Clinton administration pushing Fannie and Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.
The Clinton-era corruption combined with unprecedented catering to affordable housing lobbyists.
By the way, you know what affordable housing is?
Housing nobody could pay for.
Housing the people who live in it can't pay.
Affordable housing, that's right, is welfare state housing.
Next time you hear the term affordable housing is welfare state housing paid for by you, me, and all the rest.
So the Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of both Fannie and Freddie, a move that expected to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
The government can do no wrong crowd just doesn't get it.
They won't acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-meaning, if misguided, acts.
So here we are.
We're back to the old excuse.
Well, our hearts was in the right place.
Forget examining the results.
Just like the great society went south, the war on poverty.
All this garbage never works.
Doesn't matter.
We're not supposed to examine the results.
We're supposed to examine their good intentions, the size of their hearts.
All well and good.
Democrats are sitting ducks on this.
Democrats are sitting ducks on the energy issue.
Democrats are sitting ducks in the culture war.
Democrats, Obama, Biden are sitting ducks on every back pocket issue that matters to American families.
And we've got McCain people bashing George Bush.
Now, I understand the need for distance here, the Bush unpopularity, but find something else to do it on, like hunting.
Folks, it pains me.
Obama and the Democrats are sitting ducks on the issue that has Americans feeling unsettled, and that is the economy, their money, their houses.
Democrats did this.
George Bush did not.
By the way, while all this is going on, Obama's close to raising $400 million.
He's got this giant fundraiser in Hollywood tonight: $28,500 to get in.
Barbara's Dreisand singing in the midst of a depression.
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