Is it hypocrisy to vote against a bill that has more bad than good things in it, and then be willing to admit the good parts?  It’s not like this bill was only about 15 words.  There were good parts, and bad parts.  They voted against it because the bad parts outweighed the good.  It is being honest that lets the Republicans admit to the good parts.

I can’t speak about the other Congressmen on this list, Chris, but I can tell you that my Congressman, Calvert, didn’t make his decision by weighing the evidence.  I called his office a day before the House voted and they told me that they hadn’t taken a position on the bill.  Then I called the morning they were voting, and they said they were voting no.  I asked why, and they repeated the same spiel the House Republican leadership had given out (I knew because I saw it on CNN).  When I said I wanted to know why he was voting against it when our district is dying on the vine, I was told they would send me something in the mail and they hung up on me!  How’s that for democracy?

bob,
I believe you have hit the nail on the head.  You said “Calvert, didn’t make his decision by weighing the evidence”.  You are exactly right.  Since there was no time to weigh the evidence, the only prudent answer would be No.  If there had been time to weight the evidence, it is possible that a Yes vote would have been justifiable.  Without the time to weigh the evidence, there is no way to know, so NO is the only answer that honesty and integrity would allow.

Clint,
You imply, by your statement, that the bill is all good.  Is this your position, or do you admit to there being bad things in the bill?

Now Clint, do you really think not stating your position on the bill would slip past us?

And, my thinking is that no rational person would believe all of the lies that are the foundation of your statement “Republican-controlled government of the past 20 years”.  Then you follow it with “else we wouldn’t be in the state we are now in”.  You really think that the Carter/Clinton/Frank gift of Affordable Housing, and the subsequent banking system crash that resulted from it, can be blamed on Bush?  I have seen the video of the Democrats fighting tooth and nail to keep Bush from regulating Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac before the crash happened.  Have you seen this video?  Were you aware that Bush tried 11 times since 2001 to get more regulation for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac?  Were you aware that the Democrats claimed there was nothing wrong, and did everything in their power to prevent the regulation?  Only an irrational or uneducated person would believe anybody other than the Democrats are responsible for this mess.

bush did in a war for oil and for tax cuts for the rich were still paying for both for generation

A Kay,
Funny how you can accidentally admit the truth, even while you are twisting it. You said .. the banks, and lax regulation of them are primarily to blame for the meltdown”.  True.  The banks were forced by the government to make loans that they should not have made, to people who could not pay it back.  When Bush saw this, he tried 11 times to increase regulation, but was rebuffed by Democrats.  You followed by saying: “They all took risks on these sub prime house loans that they couldn’t afford to take”.  Right again.  they would never have made the Sub-Prime loans if it wasn’t for congress threatening them to make these loans.  You strayed real far though when you said “That was not policy or law or some GSE that caused them to do this”.  Wrong.  The Community Reinvestment Act “is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods”

The responsibility for this rests squarely on the those that brought us this abomination of a law.  I encourage you to learn about it.  I also encourage you to watch the videos on youTube that show Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and pals crying foul when Bush tried to INCREASE regulation of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac.  These two facts alone thoroughly undermine your position.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
and
Just search for “fannie mae regulation” on youtube.  There are some produced summary versions, and if you look further, there a the original videos of the Democrats accusing the Republican of awful things, when the Republicans tried to increase regulations.

I love facts.  Facts are always on your side, when your are not twisting them to your own ends.

So, because I cite a wikipedia article that makes my point any less valid?

Also, The section you point to shows both sides, not just the part you mentioned.  in the conclusion at the end it notes that “former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines said it might have been a catalyst encouraging bad behavior”  He is a Democrat, and even he admits this. And the final statement in the article says “Bob McTeer, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank from 1991 to 2004, said “There was a lot of pressure from Congress and generally everywhere to make homeownership affordable for poor and low-income people. Some mortgages were made that would not have ordinarily been made.” He also said “When a bank made a decision to purchase mortgaged-backed securities, they would somehow determine if some of them were in zip codes covered by the CRA, and therefore they could get CRA credit.””  I’d say it sounds like the CRA is directly responsible for the environment that led to the meltdown.

But even more telling is you fail to discuss the attempts by Bush to increase the regulation on FannieMae/FreddieMac specifically because of the bad banking practices that led to the meltdown.

I find it a best practice to discuss things in context, don’t you?

I am equally not convinced from your argument.  Since when has the government taking something over been a success? Elites in central planning have never been able to properly manage everything. What make anyone think it will magically work this time?  In fact, government almost invariably does a worse job than the private sector.  And we end up in debt because of it.

11 trillion now, and with it looking like Obama will be asking for another trillion every couple of months, who knows where we will be by 2012.

11,000,000,000,000/300,000,000 people = only 37000 each.  What me worry?

A Kay, you are almost entirely wrong. The reasn WHY those banks outside the CRA thought it was “safe” to make the very loans that they had resisted, even lobbied against, was because they were supposedly underwritten by Fm/Fm.  Secondly, comparing an inherited debt as justification for deepening the problem, hardly seems a valid argument.  When Obama is done, the debt will be 9.4 trillion dollars.  As of this writing, our INTEREST ONLY payments are now $775 BILLION per annum, with our first note do and payable to the China Development Bank in Aug, 2014.  Hmm…how we gonna pay it?  In fact, how are we even going to pay the service on the debt?  The government has NEVER made that much profit per annum. 

The TRUTH of the matter is, we have basically corrupt criminals running our Government, and they ALL should be imprisoned for embezzelment, misappropriation of funds, and a multitude of crimes against the people.  THEY have robbed YOUR social security.  Did you fail to pay your taxes?  Did you fail to do ‘the right thing’?  If you are negligent, what befalls you?  Why aren’t they held accountable to the same standards?  And the worst of the worst have been the Liberals.  Not because they are more crooked, or have stolen more, or been more negligent in carrying out the mandate accorded them…but because they are hypocrits of the most egregious sort.  Because they campagain on behalf of the poor, the illegal, the downtrodden, the uneducated…while they themselves voet themselves an annual raise, fly around on taxpayer paid for jets (with a fuel cost of $60,000/DAY)...(btw, the ONLY speaker of the house to EVER do so). 

I laugh every time i see some Lib talk abot the Republican Fat Cats.  The most money resides with the Democrats in the Houses, and their supporters.  And they live the most upscale lifestyles imaginable, AT the expense of the very people they proclaim to want to help.  And THAT hyprocrisy is appalling.  What is even more appalling is that their narcotized followers driveling their bleeding heart mantra, are so blind they do not even see it.  Now, for some history:

Jimmy Carter became our 39th president at the young age of 52. He was a one-term governor from Plains, GA, where he managed the family peanut farm and taught Sunday school. He was also a graduate of the Naval Academy and served seven years in the Navy, leaving as a lieutenant.

He came to power in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the resignation of President Nixon. The public wanted change and someone new, and Carter was an ambitious, hands-on politician who promised better days. As good as his intentions were, however, the things he tried were not successful. In fact, he created far more serious problems than he ever solved.

The centerpiece of Carter’s foreign policy was human rights, and he did achieve one noble success - a peace treaty between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin.

Unfortunately, that later led to Sadat’s assassination at the hands of Muslim radicals.

Many people felt Carter was a good man who worked hard and meant well. But he was naive and incompetent in handling the enormous burdens and complex challenges of being president.

He wrongly believed Americans had an “inordinate fear of communism,” so he lifted travel bans to Cuba, North Vietnam and Cambodia and pardoned draft evaders. He also stopped B-1 bomber production and gave away our strategically located Panama Canal.

His most damaging miscalculation was the withdrawal of U.S. support for the Shah of Iran, a strong and longtime military ally. Carter objected to the Shah’s alleged mistreatment of imprisoned Soviet spies who were working to overthrow Iran’s government. He thought the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, being a religious man, would make a fairer leader.

Having lost U.S. support, the Shah was overthrown, the Ayatollah returned, Iran was declared an Islamic nation and Palestinian hit men were hired to eliminate opposition.

The Ayatollah then introduced the idea of suicide bombers to the Palestine Liberation Organization, paying $35,000 to PLO families whose young people were brainwashed to kill as many Israelis as possible by blowing themselves up in crowded shopping areas.

Next, the Ayatollah used Iran’s oil wealth to create, train and finance a new terrorist organization, Hezbollah, which later would attack Israel in 2006.

In November 1979, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Not until six months into the ordeal did Carter attempt a rescue. But the mission, using just six Navy helicopters, was poorly executed. Three of the copters were disabled or lost in sandstorms. (Pilots weren’t allowed to meet with weather forecasters because someone in authority worried about security.) Five airmen and three Marines lost their lives.

So, due to overconfidence, inexperience and poor judgment, Carter undermined and lost a strong ally, Iran, that today aggressively threatens the U.S., Israel and the rest of the world with nuclear weapons.

But that’s not all. After Carter met for the first time with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the USSR promptly invaded Afghanistan. Carter, ever the naive appeaser, was shocked. “I can’t believe the Russians lied to me,” he said.

The invasion attracted a 23-year-old Saudi named Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan to recruit Muslim fighters and raise money for an anti-Soviet jihad. Part of that group eventually became al-Qaida, a terrorist organization that would declare war on America several times between 1996 and 1998 before attacking us on 9/11, killing more Americans than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

On Carter’s watch, the Soviet Union went on an unrestrained rampage in which it took over not only Afghanistan, but also Ethiopia, South Yemen, Angola, Cambodia, Mozambique, Grenada and Nicaragua.

In spite of this, Carter’s last defense budget proposed spending 45% below pre-Vietnam levels for fighter aircraft, 75% for ships, 83% for attack submarines and 90% for helicopters.

Years later, as a civilian, Carter negotiated a peace agreement with North Korea to keep that communist country from developing nuclear weapons. He also convinced President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to go along with it. But the signed piece of paper proved worthless. The North Koreans deceived Carter and instead used our money, incentives and technical equipment to build nuclear weapons and pose the threat we face today.

Thus did Carter unwittingly become our Neville Chamberlain, creating with his well-intended but inept, unrealistic and gullible actions the very conditions that led to the three most dangerous security threats we face today: Iran, al-Qaida and North Korea.

On the domestic side, Carter gave us inflation of 15%, the highest in 34 years; interest rates of 21%, the highest in 115 years; and a severe energy crisis with lines around the block at gas stations nationwide.

In 1977, Carter, along with a Democrat Congress, created a worthy project with noble intentions—the Community Reinvestment Act. Over strong industry objections, it mandated that all banks meet the credit needs of their entire communities.

In 1995, President Clinton imposed even stronger regulations and performance tests that coerced banks to substantially increase loans to low-income, poverty-area borrowers or face fines or possible restrictions on expansion. These revisions allowed for securitization of CRA loans containing sub prime mortgages.

By 1997, good loans were bundled with poor ones and sold as prime packages to institutions here and abroad. That shifted risk from the loan originators, freeing banks to begin pyramiding and make more of these profitable sub prime products.

Under two young, well-intended presidents, therefore, big-government plans and mandates played a significant role in the current sub-prime mortgage mess and its catastrophic consequences for the U.S. and international economies.

Hardest-hit by the mortgage foreclosures have been the citizens that Democrats always claim to help most—inner-city residents who fell victim to low or no down payment schemes, unexpected adjustable rates, deceptive loan applications and commission-hungry salespeople.

Now we’re having to bail out at huge cost Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the very agencies that were supposed to stabilize the system. In time, this should improve the situation. But the party of Carter and Clinton that midwifed our mortgage mess now wants to be trusted to take over and have the government run our entire system of health care!

And everyone is blaming Bush for our current problems.