It should be four. But three still means Barack Obama is a lying liar. Here’s the lie.
“Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he’d double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.”
— President Obama, in a new two-minute television ad released Sept. 27, 2012
“This election to me is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment. This is a clear choice. The Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper income people and go back to deregulation. That is what got us into trouble in the first place.”
— Former president Bill Clinton, in an Obama campaign ad running since August
Barack Obama bears more responsibility for the financial collapse than Bush ever did. Obama and his fellow Democrats politicized bank lending on home loans, forcing banks to lend to people who were not credit worthy. That led first to the bubble, as more people entered the home loan market, and then led to the collapse, as more people defaulted on loans that they could not afford. There were other angles and factors, but that’s the basic gist of the housing collapse.
Obama and the Democrats have successfully escaped responsibility for all this, largely because the pathetically biased media won’t call them on it.
The pathetically biased media also won’t call Obama on his Libya cover-up, or his allowing federal scofflaw Kathleen Sebelius to keep her job, or for telling federal defense contractors to go ahead and violate federal law instead of sending out layoff notices as they’re supposed to — required to by federal law.
It is time for the Obama campaign to retire this talking point, no matter how much it seems to resonate with voters. The financial crisis of 2008 stemmed from a variety of complex factors, in particular the bubble in housing prices and the rise of exotic financial instruments. Deregulation was certainly an important factor, but as the government commission concluded, the blame for that lies across administrations, not just in the last Republican one.
In any case, the Bush tax cuts belong at the bottom of the list — if at all. Moreover, it is rather strange for the campaign to cite as its source an article that, according to the author, does not support this assertion.
We nearly made this Four Pinocchios but ultimately decided that citing deregulation in conjunction with tax cuts kept this line out of the “whopper” category. Still, in his effort to portray Romney as an echo of Bush, the president really stretches the limits here.
Three Pinocchios
So Glenn Kessler gives Obama three Pinocchios for deflecting blame for the housing collapse that just about brought down the entire financial system. It’s a monstrous lie, insulted by the childish Pinocchio treatment, but whatever. It’s about all we can expect from the pathetically biased, dishonest, threat to the republic that the mainstream media has become.
It’s time the media retire this silly fact-checking game and just do its job. Obama has three possible career-ending scandals swirling around him right now. Four, if you count Fast and Furious. Two of these four scandals have actual body counts: The two Americans killed in connection with Fast and Furious, and the four killed in Libya.
How many Pinocchios are six dead Americans and dozens of dead Mexicans worth?
Thank you for this. Nothing ticks me off more lately than to hear Obama blithely lie that Romney will re-introduce the very policies that caused the economic disaster in the first place, when the policies that created the crisis did, in fact, span several administrations and were pushed by Obama’s ACORN, to name just one culprit. NO one has been held accountable on this, and I don’t think the GOP has rebutted these lies to any extent, either.
The media is more likely to ask Romney about his responsiblity for murdering the laid off worker’s wife than they are to ask about Fast and Furious or the torture killing of the ambassador.
Bush had very little to do with it, Bush lobbied to rein in Fannie and Freddie and the Dems wouldn’t listen.
It was a bipartisan and very badly mistaken decision to repeal Glass-Steagall.
Letting AIG write CDS with no reserves decision was made under Clinton.
The banks ran wild out of control, I put 70% of more of the blame on Wall Street and the mortgage companies, 20% on greedy speculators and home “buyers”, 5% on the CRA, and 5% on the Fed.
But that STILL puts more blame on Obambus than on Bush.
AND TRICKLE-DOWN HAD NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH IT.
*AND* what Romney wants is also not trickle-down.
Obambus is just stupid enough he may not be aware of just how much of a lie this all is, though I’m sure he knows it’s not entirely accurate. Nor cares. Nor, perhaps, should he, politics being politics.
Who’s the only president ever to start a war and not ask the american people to help in collective sacrifice and pay for it through taxes..? And he did it twice… Don’t just blame the housing bubble. Look at the budget figures of 2000 and then 2008 and tell me what happened to all the money?
Oh and how many Pinocchios are WMD’s worth? Because China is still waiting to collect the money he borrowed off them to go and look…
I believe it was Sen. Carl Levin (D. Mich.) who said, just before the first Iraq war, that not only do we know that Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction, we have the receipts. We KNOW he had WMD because we, the United States, sold them to him when Iraq was still an ally, back during the Cold War, and in the middle of a war with Iran. If we know he had them, where did they go? If he destroyed them, which is all we really wanted, why wouldn’t let the inspectors in and PROVE IT?! That’s what the UN called for. Saddam failed to follow through.
Well, Realist, I suppose its pretty clear that you won’t be voting for George Bush this Election day.
And I won’t be voting for Jimmy Carter.. but I’m not going to waste time telling you why.
I’d ask you to look at the budget figures of the Obama administration, except he has yet to actually sign one.
Oh, and let’s see, WMDs you mean the ones that got moved to Syria? THOSE WMDs? The ones that every major intelligence agency in the world said he had? THOSE?
It’s been nearly four years, stop blaming a guy who not only isn’t to blame, but isn’t in office, and isn’t running.
The right can repeat the assertion over and over that Dems, including Frank & Clinton, caused the recession by forcing banks to lend to those who couldn’t afford home loans, but repetition will not make it factual. There has never been law that required home loans to those who could not afford such loans. There are numerous examples, however, of outright criminal fraud perpetrated by bank officers and mortgage lenders.
Stop spreading your lies. http://tinyurl.com/886bgre
Bush and the Republicans had nothing to do with the financial collapse.
It was Clinton who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 2000. It was Greenspan and the Fed who created the housing bubble in 2002. And it was Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat party controlled House in 2004 that raised the minimum wage and destroyed millions of jobs.
Those are your three causes of the financial crisis. That is unassailable FACT.
Two corrections:
1. While Clinton did sign the repeal of Glass-Steagall, it was passed by the Congress. Both the House and Senate had Republican majorities at the time. Both parties were complicit in the repeal.
2. Repubicans controlled the House in 2004. I think you meant 2007 when Democrats controlled both the House and Senate. That’s when the minimum wage was increased.
Plenty of blame to slew around everywhere. We are now in 4th quarter 2012, not 2nd quarter 2008.
The most galling part is in the Clinton commercial (which has been playing on almost a continuous loop in Florida), when Clinton says “President Obama has a plan to strengthen the middle class, job training, etc, etc”
I just want to yell at the screen: well, you guys have had 4 years and spent about a trillion dollars on crap, and we are nowhere – just when does Obama intend to install his “plan.”