It appears Obama was more right than he knew. There are a lot of bitter white people out there, and they prefer to blame the election of the first African American as president for all their troubles than the policies of the of the extreme right wing faction of the Republican party which has governed and controlled the political conservative discourse in this country since the days of Ronald Reagan. Rather than blame the free traders and union busters of the GOP who created the greatest income inequality in our country since the Great Depression, they blame liberals and, especially, minorities, for all that's wrong with our economy and their blighted lives. Rather than look at the deliberate failure to regulate the financial markets which created the meltdown of the world's financial infrastructure using Greenspanian economics unregulated DMFDs (i.e., Derivatives of Mass Financial Destruction), they have chosen to blame the current crisis on black people buying homes under a federal law that mandated they be treated the same way as whites who apply for mortgages.

Fresh off the false and politicized attack on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, today we’re hearing the know-nothings blame the subprime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act — a 30-year-old law that was actually weakened by the Bush administration just as the worst lending wave began. This is even more ridiculous than blaming Freddie and Fannie.

The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in 1977, requires banks to lend in the low-income neighborhoods where they take deposits. Just the idea that a lending crisis created from 2004 to 2007 was caused by a 1977 law is silly. But it’s even more ridiculous when you consider that most subprime loans were made by firms that aren’t subject to the CRA. [...]

Not surprisingly given the higher degree of supervision, loans made under the CRA program were made in a more responsible way than other subprime loans. CRA loans carried lower rates than other subprime loans and were less likely to end up securitized into the mortgage-backed securities that have caused so many losses, according to a recent study by the law firm Traiger & Hinckley (PDF file here).

Finally, keep in mind that the Bush administration has been weakening CRA enforcement and the law’s reach since the day it took office. The CRA was at its strongest in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, a period when subprime loans performed quite well. It was only after the Bush administration cut back on CRA enforcement that problems arose, a timing issue which should stop those blaming the law dead in their tracks. [...]

Better targets for blame in government circles might be the 2000 law which ensured that credit default swaps would remain unregulated, the SEC’s puzzling 2004 decision to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital and that same agency’s failure to oversee those brokerage firms in subsequent years as many gorged on subprime debt. (Barry Ritholtz had an excellent and more comprehensive survey of how Washington contributed to the crisis in this week’s Barron’s.) [...]

I also learned something from a post back in April by Robert Gordon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which ends with this ditty:

> It’s telling that, amid all the recent recriminations, even lenders have not fingered CRA. That’s because CRA didn’t bring about the reckless lending at the heart of the crisis. Just as sub-prime lending was exploding, CRA was losing force and relevance. And the worst offenders, the independent mortgage companies, were never subject to CRA — or any federal regulator. Law didn’t make them lend. The profit motive did. And that is not political correctness. It is correctness.

By the way, that article I quote from above came from that bastion of Marxist-Leninist thought, Businessweek.

But facts are simply not relevant to those who prefer to see things in black and white, who prefer that facts not get in the way of their pre-conceived notions (a/k/a prejudices). People who will look for any excuse to put their blinders on and blame the evil black dude with the funny name and the silver tongue (and his hordes of angry black and white liberal followers). Otherwise, how can you explain this provocative (and that's putting it in the best light possible) article in TIME NEWSWEEK magazine?

Is Obama the Antichrist?
The winning lottery number in Illinois was 666, which, as everyone knows, is the sign of the Beast.

The Clintons were attacked remorselessly in the media during Bill's eight years in the Oval Office, but I predict that whatever they suffered (and admittedly Bill's philandering and outsider status created an opening for the far right feeding frenzy that engulfed his Presidency, despite his championing of essentially moderate republican policies while in office) it will have no comparison to the wringer the Obamas will be put through. Obama has already engendered more death threats than any presidential candidate in history. Some of that was no doubt due to the efforts of Governor Palin during the campaign ...

The Secret Service reportedly is investigating defeated Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who agents say is responsible for provoking a spike in death threats against President-elect Barack Obama.

The Secret Service would not say how many threats have been made, but said that from Maine to Idaho, it’s the most threats ever made against a President-elect.

... but I hesitate to blame her for all of the venomous and dangerous vitriol that has arisen against Obama since it became clear he was going to succeed George W. Bush as our next President. One cannot fan flames where their are no embers to begin with. And for all the talk of a post-racial America, for all our rightful pride in electing a member of a small and oppressed minority group to lead our country, something you would not see in countries like -- well -- like Iran, for example ...

Earlier this year, Ahmadinejad said that the "U.S. (political) establishment will not let Obama win the presidential election." This was believed because in none of the Muslim countries, including Iran, does a man of a minority ethnicity like Obama have even a slim chance of getting a position in a high office.

... we still have a long way to go before this country lives up to its ideals of "equality and justice for all." And electing Barrack Obama as our President will not solve those problems. Indeed, by all indications in the short term, it may exacerbate them. For all of Bush's negative approval ratings, war crimes and unconstitutional actions over the last 8 years, I doubt he was subject to as many threats against his life as Obama has been since Obama declared his candidacy for President. And that tells you everything you need to know about how far we have truly come as a nation.

Pray for the Obamas, or wish him well as he tries to right the mess that eight years of the mismanagement and malfeasance of President George W. Bush has wrought. But don't expect that his racial heritage will have no bearing on the way he will be treated in the media, or in the way he will be demonized and despised in the hearts and minds of millions of our fellow Americans.

After all, Republicans have spent the past 40 years dividing Americans along racial, ethnic and political lines in order to obtain and retain power. Only the complete and utter failure of their economic program, their massive corruption and the pursuit of criminal and costly wars led the American electorate to vote them out of office in the last two election cycles. Yet, the divisiveness and hatred they encouraged and incited in so many Americans have not gone away. The campaign was the easy part, folks. Now comes the hard part. Governing this country in the face of such anger, bigotry and deep distrust.

And knowing the so-called liberal media as we do, does anyone expect them to provide a fair and balanced coverage of the Obama Presidency? Considering the NEWSWEEK article previously cited herein, I think we already know the answer to that question.