The Perfect Storm Hits Ohio

Well, the liberal whining concerning the defaults on low-income housing loans. Of course, the fault lies completely with the banks and lending institutions.

For county treasurer Jim Rokakis, the greed of the banks is to blame for this man-made disaster.
"All you needed was a pulse to buy a house. Some loans were written with no money down, no proof of buyer's incomes. They did not even check what people were saying. Most of those folks were jobless," he said in an interview.
"Shaker Heights was the perfect storm: poor folks, unemployed and a desire to get a piece of the American Dream."

I understand that the first thing the banks did was to look for the unemployed and poor and hold a gun to their head to get a loan for a house they couldn't possibly afford. Well, there was a gun held to someones' head, but it wasn't the poor and unemployed. Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to 1990. The New York Times headline reads: Banks Are Prodded to Offer Better Service in Poor Areas. It makes for an interesting read, but to the rub: lending institutions were forced to offer unprofitable loans, and the only way to offer lower rates on high risk loans was through the use of adjustable rate mortgages. Otherwise, the banks were threatened with action under the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (thank you Jimmy Carter).

And, does anyone remember the complaints about a lack of investment in central cities following the Rodney King riots? South-central LA was "underserved' - check out this report by the Poverty and Race Research Council.

So, when the left gets their way, high risk people are put in houses and turn around and lose them when circumstances change - they complain that it was the mean banks. You know, just like how the Savings & Loan bailouts had *absolutely* nothing to do with a change in tax laws leading to a downturn in the housing market.

Anyone want to guess how long it is until Toledo jumps on the bandwagon? After all, King Carlton has tried to sue gunmakers, why not 5/3rd Bank? Then they can rename the stadium "Fink Park"

Why It's Easier to be a Liberal (part 2)

Another one of the great hallmarks of liberals is their lack of consistency. To some extent, this is true of all politicians, but the liberal leadership has it in spades. It is much easier to skate through life when your position can change from minute to minute. Conservatives find this much harder, the base holds them to their position. President Bush campaigned one way on the issue of illegal immigration, ask him about the support he received from conservatives when he proposed a modified form of amnesty.

When you don't have to stick to a single position on a broad issue, you're free to pander to the political group of the moment, and proclaim agreement with a differing position the very next day. Liberals refer to this process as "triangulation," and seek it in their candidates for high office. Thanks to an obliging mainstream media, liberals are seldom called to the carpet - even when their very words show them to be guilty of hypocrisy. Think I'm crazy? Let's look at a few examples.

Liberals loathe the use of the military in the protection of the US, or in regions of US interest, but have no problem with sending troops off to places like Darfur – to serve as police officers (and get shot), for no real purpose. I suppose the genocide in Iraq didn’t count; and the chemical weapons (categorized as “weapons of mass destruction”) were conveniently ignored as well.

Use a label to describe a liberal (“emotion-driven” comes to mind), they’ll shout you down. After all, “there is no such thing as a typical liberal.” Ah, but there is a typical conservative – heartless, money stealing polluters, if you believe the hype. I suppose that liberals detest labels like the plague because they serve to pin down people and tie them to their positions. And, in case you were wondering, they (inconsistently) feel free to decry conservatives as ”racists” and “homophobes” – the “no typical conservative” argument doesn’t make it through the wash.

And yesterday, liberals cheered the firing of Don Imus. Don't get me wrong, he owed an apology for his remarks. But, I suspect I'll be waiting for an apology from Al Sharpton to the Duke Lacrosse players falsely indicted by a Democrat prosecutor trying to win re-election. I'm still waiting for the liberals do demand that Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and others that impugned the accused players offer to meet with the victims of this injustice - offer sincere remarks, and public ally make amends.

Soon, we'll look at how liberals justify their positions.

Why It's Easier to be a Liberal (part 1)

I recently had someone pose me the question, “Why would anyone want to be a liberal? There’re wrong on nearly everything, and they’re always so miserable.”

The answer: it is easier to be liberal than conservative. You can almost hear the voices now; “it…is…not…. It’s hard to… be concerned... about the bunnies.” Well, sorry to burst your bubbles, but it isn’t hard. In fact, there’s nothing hard about being a liberal – excepting the occasional hair pulling every time a conservative makes a fool of you in front of others. I know that you liberals feel bad when that happens, and this leads me to my first point.

To be a liberal, one feels instead of thinks. The basis for liberal arguments is rooted in emotion, not logic. Logic requires the application of rational thought, hard evidence, and critical attention to detail. Feeling requires whatever base emotion that touches one. Logic requires that to find a solution, one must prove what the cause is; feeling needs only correlating evidence. Logic requires one to train the mind, and be versed in the area of discussion. Emotion is instinctive, acquired at birth, and requires no extensive training.

If you don’t believe liberals use emotion instead of logic, watch how many times they start their arguments with “I feel.” If you “think” a particular way about a subject, you open yourself to questions on the data that backs your thoughts up. But, the way you “feel” cannot be challenged. Ever wonder why self-esteem is more important than math in your local school? Liberals want feelers, not thinkers.

Being a liberal also requires little intelligence and wisdom. This is not to say that there aren’t so intelligent liberals – college campuses are full of book-smart liberals. One must temper intelligence with wisdom, however. Wisdom comes from experience – something many professors lack (they’ve lived their entire life in the ivory tower, protected from the “real world.”) Wisdom shows that results are most often dependant on more than one variable, and that variables are only isolated in the lab, particularly when human beings are concerned. Take taxes: if one only considers the tax rate variable, tax dollars go up when the rates are raised. Yet, wisdom (gained through experience) shows that people change their behavior, finding more tax shelters, etc; and taxes go down.

The act of the personal attack is also sign one lacks intelligence, or the facts gained through observation, to back up one’s position. Try to discuss racial preferences with a liberal; get labeled a racist. Take a stand against gay marriage, you’re a homophobe. The fact that these responses to a position on issues resonate with libs indicates we’re dealing with the product of a dumbed-down educational system.

Next time: Liberal consistency.