Obama's Nuttiest Radical Association Yet

A lot of attention as been on Obama's long list of questionable at best radical associations. Enough has been said of how can he fight terrorists, if he is "friendly" with Bill Ayres, an unrepentant domestic terrorist. Questions have also arisen about how he can be "post-racial", if his "spiritual advisors" are Rev. Wright or Father Fleiger, two outspoken racists. One could also wonder how can he champion "bipartisanship" when he votes with the democratic leadership about 97% of the time. The only time he can cite that he worked with the republicans was with the nuclear proliferation bill, which helped keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. That is not exactly a huge leap to get the GOP to go along with that. It is like getting both sides to agree that murderers should be in jail. Instead, I'm going to focus on the little talked about his partnership with ACORN.

If John McCain wants to win in a few weeks, he needs to focus less on Ayres, Wright, and Fleiger and more on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Most know about the other three. Most don't know about ACORN. The housing bubble bursting should bring ACORN more into the forefront. Until recently, the thing that this organization was known for was numerous voter fraud scandals like the one in Las Vegas just a few days ago where some of the Dallas Cowboys somehow got registered to vote in Nevada or in the states of Washington, Missouri, Ohio, etc. Now their tactics in getting sub-prime lending for people in Chicago and many other cities need to be payed more attention. Obama uses his "community organizing" as an example of the "experiences" that prepared him for the presidency. Not much is known about his time as a community organizer. We do know that he spent time with ACORN as a trainer. Some of those people that he trained went out to strong-arm and intimidate local banks to give loans to people that couldn't afford it, the starting point of the trouble that we're having in the economy. He kept his hands clean and didn't do any of this himself, so he could run for office. It hasn't been proven that he taught them to strong-arm and intimidate, but he was the one that supposedly taught them how to do their job. In Chicago, there were reports of ACORN activists going to bank managers' homes to "persuade" them to do sub-prime loans. He also raised alot of money for them and represented them in court.

The democrats have their fingerprints all over this crisis. Jimmy Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)in 1977. This was designed to make credit more available to lower income families. In 1995, Clinton took the CRA to a new level. Altogether, they overregulated where there was little need of any regulations by adding a quota of a certain number of loans to the poor, and they underregulated where there was a great need by lowering the oversight of the banking practices. Even Clinton recognized his own mistakes in this in a recent interview. Why can't the rest of the left? Obama blames the GOP for the deregulation when it was Pelosi, Reid, Franks, Dodd, and company fighting regulation of Fannie and Freddie all the way. McCain and other republicans warned of impending disaster, but they didn't protest loud enough. Activists from ACORN even began to have a say about who received loans and control massive sums of bank capital. The CRA became instrumental in the bank's lending practices and the fall of our economy by being exploited by community organizations like ACORN. If this is how Obama organized his community, should we give him a nation to "organize"? The democrats are still beholden to ACORN. In the bailout bill, the democrats still tried to give more money to ACORN. Why are they wanting to reward the people who helped bring down the economy? The GOP was so outraged by this that in the end, it wasn't kept in the bill.

Let's not forget that the democrats also put pressure on Fannie and Freddie to take on the toxic loans that the banks, that ACORN and others intimidated, could no longer handle. There is a reason why Fannie and Freddie has given the democrats much more campaign contributions than republicans. The democrats have been covering up for Fannie and Freddie's shortcomings for years. Obama reached number 2 all-time (that's counting over 20 years of contributions) even though he has been in the senate for only 3 years. Democrats Sen. Chris Dodd, who is number one, and Sen. John Kerry, who is number three, have been in office over two decades longer than Obama.

If McCain focuses on these issues, he could still be moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave by January.