Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

On MSNBC this week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter tried to connect John McCain to the current financial disaster, saying: "If you remember the Keating Five scandal that (McCain) was a part of. ... He's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country."

McCain was "in the middle of" the Keating Five case in the sense that he was "exonerated." The lawyer for the Senate Ethics Committee wanted McCain removed from the investigation altogether, but, as The New York Times reported: "Sen. McCain was the only Republican embroiled in the affair, and Democrats on the panel would not release him."

So John McCain has been held hostage by both the Viet Cong and the Democrats.

Alter couldn't be expected to know that: As usual, he was lifting material directly from Kausfiles. What is unusual was that he was stealing a random thought sent in by Kausfiles' mother, who, the day before, had e-mailed: "It's time to bring up the Keating Five. Let McCain explain that scandal away."

The Senate Ethics Committee lawyer who investigated McCain already had explained that scandal away -- repeatedly. It was celebrated lawyer Robert Bennett, most famous for defending a certain horny hick president a few years ago.

In February this year, on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," Bennett said, for the eight billionth time:

"First, I should tell your listeners I'm a registered Democrat, so I'm not on (McCain's) side of a lot of issues. But I investigated John McCain for a year and a half, at least, when I was special counsel to the Senate Ethics Committee in the Keating Five. ... And if there is one thing I am absolutely confident of, it is John McCain is an honest man. I recommended to the Senate Ethics Committee that he be cut out of the case, that there was no evidence against him."

It's bad enough for Alter to be constantly ripping off Kausfiles. Now he's so devoid of his own ideas, he's ripping off the idle musings of Kausfiles' mother.

Even if McCain had been implicated in the Keating Five scandal -- and he wasn't -- that would still have absolutely nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis currently roiling the financial markets. This crisis was caused by political correctness being forced on the mortgage lending industry in the Clinton era.

Before the Democrats' affirmative action lending policies became an embarrassment, the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1992, a majority-Democratic Congress "mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains."

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.

Instead of looking at "outdated criteria," such as the mortgage applicant's credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named "Caylee."

Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke -- it's a fact.

When Democrats controlled both the executive and legislative branches, political correctness was given a veto over sound business practices.

In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration, saying that "black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded."

Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn't get out of their loans by selling their houses.

A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it's gone off.

In Bush's first year in office, the White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.

Rep. Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing." How dare you oppose suicidal loans to people who can't repay them! The New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "under heavy assault by the Republicans," but these entities still had "important political allies" in the Democrats.

Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.

Political correctness had already ruined education, sports, science and entertainment. But it took a Democratic president with a Democratic congress for political correctness to wreck the financial industry.

Once again Miss Ann doesn't really need humor to make her point.

What is so frustrating to Republicans (and anyone else with an IQ in the triple - or even high double - digits) is that this scandal is entirely the making of the liberal left. It was not the GOP which brought affirmative action to the mortgage industry.

All we Republicans need is a presidential candidate who is willing to stand up and speak the truth and point his finger at the guilty. Sure the mainstream media (also known as the Obama campaign's auxiliary press office) will do everything in its power to cover up the truth but the alternate media has destroyed their monopoly on the dissemination of information.

Talk radio and the blogs can get the truth out but we need the leadership of our candidate to to cause everything to jell in the minds of the general public.

If McCain and Palin will go on the attack they will force the Obama camp (including the mainstream media) to go over on the defensive and people on the defensive can't help but look at least a little guilty.

I think that it says something good about John McCain's character that he is willing to put his campaign on hold and go back to the Senate in order to participate in the debate over what to do about the financial crisis. However the Obama campaign and the mainstream media (sorry, redundant) will just frame this as McCain "hiding" from his upcoming debate with Obama.

The only way this works if if McCain goes back to the Senate and sends Palin out on the campaign trail alone to keep hammering at the Democrats. Let her make the point, over and over again, that while John McCain is doing his sworn duty as a United States Senator to put the nations good ahead of his own B. Hussein Obama, who has only bothered to show up for work on 143 days during his two years as a Senator, is AWOL from the Senate so that he can continue promoting his petty little campaign.

If McCain does it that way he will turn the issue to his favor but if he muzzles his campaign while his opponent continues on the attack the very small lead that Obama may currently have in the polls will widen until it becomes insurmountable.

During the run up to the congressional elections in 2006 I warned people that while the Republicans might not deserve to win that the nation absolutely did not deserve what would happen if they lost.

Events since then have proven me more right than I ever could have feared. The stakes today are far higher than they were in 2006. We stand on the brink of handing over control of both the executive and legislative branches of government to people who are responsible for everything from the sub-prime crisis to the price of gasoline topping $4.00. How on earth can anyone hope that the outcome of such a catastrophic blunder could be anything but disastrous for the nation?