Do Facts Matter?

Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time
and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people
all the time."

Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the
Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election
day, just a few weeks from now.

Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being
fooled a whole lot of the time.

The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back
into a substantial lead over John McCain-- which is astonishing in
view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing
on this crisis.

It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and
the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher
Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years-- including the
present year-- denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big
risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who
for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an
agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years
pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting
subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial
crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary
of the Treasury, five years ago.

Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration
"right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the
financial crisis. Do facts matter?

We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the
facts show that it was the government that pressured financial
institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such
things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal
action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like
the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.

Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?

Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and
for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head
of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.

Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including
Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom
referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him
to the same standard as white CEOs.

Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was
consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!

The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines
an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the
Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin
here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But
someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on
a letterhead.

The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way.
Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial
contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.

But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream
media.

Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.

The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public.
Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to
counter-attack. They deserve to lose.

But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and
cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the
advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years
allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed
their hatred of America.

Thomas Sowell - www.tsowell.com
Ph.D. in Economics, University of Chicago, 1968
A.M. in Economics, Columbia University, 1959
A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, Harvard College, 1958

http://townhall.com/Columnists/ThomasSowell/

http://TheRealBarackObama.wordpress.com