Powerline links to a video that answers this question with admirable clarity. I’ll link to the video below [ UPDATE: the link has been updated]. First, here are a few data points from the video and other sources:

The Root Cause

* According to Senator Chris Dodd (D. CT) the “root cause” of the problem is “the housing foreclosure crisis.”

Not 100% accurate, perhaps–it’s really a credit crisis–but close enough for government work, especially from someone who has just happens to chair the Senate Banking Committee and who, completely coincidentally, has been such a conspicuous beneficiary of preferential mortgages and who, also coincidentally, leads the list of those who have received campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Guess who comes in 2nd and 3rd?)

* But what caused the housing crisis to which Senator Dodd alludes? The housing “bubble.”

* And what caused the housing bubble? “Sub-prime,” i.e., risky, mortgages; that is, mortgages made to people who, in the normal course of things would have to pay a premium in order to obtain a mortgage (if they could obtain one at all) because

a) they had bad or non-existent credit

b) their income was insufficient or

c) both.

Packaging the American Dream

A home of your own. It’s part of the American dream. Work hard, save up for a down payment, pay your bills on time and, presto, you, too, can buy a home.

For decades the government has done things to help Americans to realize the dream, e.g., graciously allowing citizens to keep some of their own money to help pay for the interest on a mortgage (the official term for this is a “tax deduction,” but I prefer my locution since it emphasizes the fact that it is YOUR MONEY we are talking about).

But what about people who do not work hard (if they work at all)? What about people who have not saved up for a down payment? What about people who do not pay their bills on time (if they pay them at all)? Why shouldn’t they get to live the American dream?

That was the question that led to

“The Community Reinvestment Act” (see here for more).

* The original Community Reinvestment Act was signed into law in 1977 by Jimmy Carter. Its purpose, in a nutshell, was to require banks to provide credit to “under-served populations,” i.e., those with poor credit.

The buzz word was “affordable mortgages,” e.g., mortgages with low teaser-rates, which required the borrower to put no money down, which required the borrower to pay only the interest for a set number of years, etc.

* In 1995, Bill Clinton’s administration made various changes to the CRA, increasing “access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities,” i.e., it provided for the securitization, i.e. public underwriting, of what everyone now calls “sub-prime mortgages.”

Bottom line? It forced banks to issue $1 trillion in sub-prime mortgages.

$1 trillion, i.e., a thousand billion dollars in sub-prime,i.e., risky, mortgages, in order to push this latest example of social engineering.

But wait: how did it force banks to do this? Easy. Introduce a federal requirement that banks make the loans or face penalties. As Howard Husock, writing in City Journal way back in 2000 observed: “Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race, to rate banks on performance. There would be no more A’s for effort. Only results—specific loans, specific levels of service—would count.” Way back in 1994, for example, Barack Obama sued Citibank on behalf of a client who charged that the bank “systematically denied mortgages to African-American applicants and others from minority neighborhoods.”

* In 1997, Bear Stearns–O firm of blessed memory–was the first to get onto the sub-prime gravy train.

* Fannie Mae & Freddy Mac–were there near the beginning, too.

Anatomy of a bubble

Step 1. The intoxication: “My house is worth millions!” From 1995 – 2005, the number of sub-prime mortgages skyrocket. So did the house prices.

Step 2. The hangover: “Oh my God, my house isn’t selling. What went wrong?”

Why didn’t someone try to stop it?

Someone did: “The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago,” The New York Times, September 11, 2003.

But someone intervened to stymie the Bush administration. Who? The New York Times reports:

Supporters of the companies said efforts to regulate the lenders tightly under those agencies might diminish their ability to finance loans for lower-income families. . . . “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Why didn’t someone else ring the alarm?

Someone else did. In 2005, John McCain co-sponsored the “Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act,” which among other things provided for more oversight of Freddie & Fannie. The bill didn’t pass. Guess who blocked it?

The bill was reintroduced in 2007. But again, no luck. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had friends in the Senate:

* Chris Dodd, a recipient of “sweetheart” loans from a Freddie and Fannie backed company.

* The junior senator from Illinois, i.e., Barack  Obama, who turned to Jim Johnson, former head (1991-1998) of Fannie Mae, to help advise him on whom to pick for the vice-presidential slot on his ticket. From 1985 to 1990, incidentally, Johnson was managing director of Lehman Brothers. Remember them?

* You might also want to check out one of Barack Obama’s other advisors: Franklin Raines, former CEO of Freddie Mac: see here , for example, or here , or here.

Towards the end of the video, we read this salutary observation: “Everyone deserves a home, not a house of cards.”

Who gave us the house of cards? Watch the whole thing here (original link was  here). And then pass it along to everyone you know.

** UPDATE ** At least two versions of the video have been removed from YouTube for alleged copyright infringement. As of this writing, this new link works;and so does this.

Yes, that’s right: “assimilation is a crime against humanity.” According, that it is, to the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spoke these words to a cheering crowd of 20,000 Turkish expatriates in Cologne, Germany, earlier this year.

Wikipedia tells us that Erdogan is a major representative of “the moderate Islamist movement” in Turkey.

Moderate? I guess that means he is against steering stolen 767s into skyscrapers.

But Erdogan is by no means moderate when it comes to his ambitions for Islam in Europe. His remark about assimilation is one sign of that. Another is his observation, in 1998, that

“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

I thank Erdogan for his forthrightness. It was, frankly, what I have thought all along, it is is one reason I look askance at building mosques in the West. In my view, they are para-military structures masquerading as religious buildings.

Were it up to me, I would make a deal: for every mosque erected in the West, we get a church or synagogue of equal size in Mecca or some other Islamic hot spot. The word for this bargain “reciprocity,” an idea that is a sine qua non for any religious freedom worthy of the name “free.” (Query: why should we allow Muslims to exploit our religious freedom to further the cause of Islamic absolutism, i.e., why should we let them employ the tolerance we extend to them to enforce intolerance against us? Just asking . . .)

But I digress. Prime Minister Erdogan was on my mind after reading Diana West’s account of what just happened in Cologne, Germany’s fourth largest city.

Cologne is home to some 120,000 Turkish Muslims, more than 10 percent of the city’s population. It is also the proposed site of yet another “mega-Mosque,” construction of which was narrowly approved last month by city officials. It was understandable, then, that Cologne should be selected as an appropriate venue for an event at which politicians and others cconcerned about the Islamicization of Europe would congregate to discuss the spread of Islamic law (Sharia) in what used to be Christian Europe. Some 1500 people were expected to participate. But, as West reports, “it was not to be.” As the crowd assembled to listen to the speeches last weekend,

many more thousands of counter-demonstrators converged on the city specifically to deny rally supporters their right to assemble, and the politicians’ right to speak. And yes, by whatever means necessary.

Like what?

The thugs among the counter-demonstrators mounted a rock-and-bottle attack that shattered windows on a river boat plying the Rhine where the politicians attempted to hold a pre-rally meeting. They blocked urban trains in order to keep rally participants away. They ringed the city center with barricades (tolerated by German police), hurled paint bombs, lit fires and launched violent attacks on some of the participants who managed to draw near the rally location. One would-be rally participant, a Jewish man, sent in an account of his ordeal to Gates of Vienna, writing: “I was wearing my kippah and readily identifiable as a Jew; however, they (the leftist counter-demonstrators) screamed at me ‘Nazi Raus.’” He reported they also shoved him, spit on him, and called him a fascist pig. “I was pummeled in the head several times and then shoved to the ground where I was beaten and kicked with steel toe boots in plain sight of police who did nothing.” He later discovered he had a broken rib.

The mayor of Cologne, Fritz Schramma, described this act of suppression as “a victory for the city of Cologne and a victory by the democratic forces of the city.” Thanks for that, Fritz!

How was all this reported in “the mainstream press”? Mostly, it was ignored. And where it was reported? “[T]he consensus narrative,” West writes, “dutifully repeated in the mainstream European media, is that it is the silenced and hounded politicians and their supporters who are the ‘fascists’; while it is the silencers and hounders who are the ‘anti-fascists.’”

Sound familiar? How do you spell “1938″?

I am writing this in London, city that every time I come is a little less English. Women wearing burqas used to be an exotic anomaly, sightings of which were confined to a few certifiably Muslim neighborhoods. Nowadays, you’ll see them on Kensington High Street, St. James’s, and the Strand. London has its own “mega-mosque” planned for the 2012 Olympic Games, which are to be held here. (Since we’re spelling things, how about “pretext”: how many Muslims participate in the Olympic Games?) The Islamicization of London has not progressed as far as the Islamicization of Cologne. And in the United States its progress is even more incipient. So should we worry? As West points out,

As in Europe, huge mosque complexes are opening across the States — one very recently in Boston and another in Atlanta. Do they portend the extension and entrenchment of Islamic law in the United States? One difference between the United States and Europe is that we don’t have street thugs enforcing a code of silence on the subject. That’s because of the other difference: We don’t have any political parties willing, or even able to discuss it.

Not very encouraging, is it?

How many things we take for granted: a robust freedom of the press, for example, and the liberty to criticize political candidates for example.

Time was, Americans could say pretty much whatever they wished about political candidates.

The news on this front, at least from Team Obama, is not encouraging. Gateway Pundit has this report:

Missouri Sheriffs & Top Prosecutors Form Obama “Truth Squads” & Threaten Libel Charges Against Obama Critics

More Hope and Change for Missouri… St. Louis and Missouri Democrat sheriffs and top prosecutors are planning to go after anyone who makes false statements against Obama during his campaign. This is so one sided I can’t even begin to describe how wrong this agenda is.

It’s one thing if they want to keep the campaign fair for both sides, but they clearly only want to enforce the issue for the Obama Camp.

KMOV has a video report on the Obama “Truth Squads”.

Glenn Reynolds has a growing list of disturbing items on this subject, including this report from his increasingly worrisome series “They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected . . .” This time it’s “They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected there would be brazen efforts to suppress free speech on political grounds — and they were right!”

God, Mies van der Rohe may or may not have said, is in the details. I wonder what would Mies have said about this detail, sent to me by my friend Andy McCarthy:

“Toilet facilities are being built at London’s Olympic Park so Muslims will not have to face Mecca while sitting on the loo.”

Thanks for the advisory, pal. And thanks, too, for the additional information that “The Islamic religion prohibits Muslims from facing the Kiblah – the direction of prayer – when they visit the lavatory.”

Noted.

As far as I know, the Catholic Church has not weighed in on the important matter of evacutorial direction, so that is one less burden for me and my co-religionists to conjure with.

Having just participated in a conference on the progress of “soft jihad,” though, I have to say that I absorbed the news about this latest accommodation to Muslim sensitivities with some irritation. No piglet (or other “pig related items“). No fido (dogs, say Muslims, are unclean). And now this.

Some months ago, discovering that English Muslims were up in arms because a certain brand of crisp was processed with alcohol, I offered, free of charge, a pragmatic intervention to tame the progress of jihad, soft, hard, and flaccid:

“Start putting a bit of alcohol in everything edible or potable. There are, of course, other reasons for wishing to increase one’s usual consumption of alcohol, but here is a patriotic imperative to guide you: what if you went into Harrod’s food hall or your local grocery shop and every item had at least some trace amount of alcohol (or, alternatively, pork residue)? I understand that there might be certain logistical difficulties, but if the EU can effectively police the system of mensuration used in its jurisdiction, if it can prohibit certain types of bananas because they deviate too markedly from the perpendicular, then surely they can employ the vast apparatus of their bureaucracy to assure that a drop of alcohol or a dollop of bacon fat is added to any food stuff sold in Britain.”

I suggest that cognate consideration be given to the placement and orientation of public toilets and other relevant bits of plumbing. These are tiny details, it is true, but you have to start somewhere. Mies, I think, would be pleased.

Any guess what Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist of John McCain’s campaign, is talking about? It could be any of the major TV networks. It could be National Public Radio. It could be The Washington Post. But as it happens, it is The New York Times–the “venerable New York Times,” as a story on Breibart.com put it.

His fuller comment tells the story more completely. The Times, Mr. Schmidt said,

“is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama.”

“This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be, but let’s not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is.”

“It is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition to advocate for the defeat of one candidate — in this case, John McCain.”

Was this a partisan comment? Of course it was, in the sense that it was made by someone who is working for, and looking out for the interests of, a political candidate. Was it also dead right, spot on, searingly accurate? You betcha.

It’s not just that the Times is “anti-McCain,” cheerfully willing to run front-page stories on his non-affair with a former publicist or refusing to publish an op-ed by the candidate responding to one by Barack Hussein Obama. It is also that it is patently, indeed embarrassingly, smitten by Obama–so smitten that its pieces on either candidate are indistinguishable from press releases disseminated by Obama campaign headquarters.

Way back in April, when the Times published another non-story–this one about Mr. McCain’s completely legitimate use of a corporate jet owned by a company run by his wife–I offered this anatomy of a typical Times non-story about a candidate it doesn’t like:

Here’s how the Times structures its non-stories about John McCain:

  1. Prissy introductory sentence or two noting that Mr. McCain has a reputation [read “unearned reputation”] for taking the ethical high road on issues like campaign finance reform.

2. “The-Times-has-learned” sentence intimating some tort or misbehavior.

3. A paragraph or two of exposition that simultaneously reveals that a) Mr. McCain actually didn’t do anything wrong but b) he would have if only the law had been different and besides everyone knows he is guilty in spirit.

It’s really easy once you get the hang of it. Here’s how it looks in practice:

1. The Setup: “Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.”

The “Times-Touch” © here is in the opposition of Mr. McCain’s “signature stance” campaign finance reform and the ominous but as-yet-unstated malfeasance: Mr. McCain claims to be a reformer, but really . . . . The suggestion of hypocrisy is all the more potent for being left in the realm of innuendo.

2. The Execution: “But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.”

Oh dear. That’s bad, right? I mean, using your wife’s jet doesn’t sound too bad, really. Perfectly normal, in fact. Convenient that she has a spare jet he could use. But it must somehow be against the law, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be news, would it? And if it wasn’t news, it wouldn’t be worth reporting. Right?

If you believe that, you don’t know the Times. Pay attention now:

3. The Obfuscation: Part one: “The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control.”

Oh. Case closed, what? Not quite:

Part two: “The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole — rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes — but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.

Because that exemption remains, Mr. McCain’s campaign was able to use his wife’s corporate plane like a charter jet while paying first-class rates, several campaign finance experts said. Several of those experts, however, added that his campaign’s actions, while keeping with the letter of law, did not reflect its spirit.”

Let’s summarize. McCain used his wife’s company’s jet. It was perfectly legal for him to do so. But some people the Times reporter talked to think it shouldn’t be legal. Therefore . . .

“Therefore” what? Therefore you run another several hundred words telling readers how many flights the plane made over a 7-month period, how much it costs per hour to fly the plane, what the F.E.C. rules are for “deadhead” flights, likely tax-consequences for Mrs. McCain’s company, ending with an all purpose disclaimer: “The Times analysis may be inexact for a variety of reasons.” Why? “For one, the Times suffers from crippling ideological bias that requires it to publish stories that are nothing more than a tissue of groundless insinuation and thinly veiled editorializing designed to discredit a candidate we don’t like but against whom we have no dirt, though we are digging as fast as we can . . .” Oops, wrong sentence: the reason the Times actually gave for its possible inexactness was “flight records do not show how many, if any, campaign travelers were aboard a plane on a given flight.” Good to know.

A reader wrote in to add this illuminating supplement:

  “[R]egarding the non-violation of FEC rules: the article itself states that the FEC didn’t even begin not-adopting this new non-rule until December – and the travel in question took place from August through February. Not in any conceivable universe would McCain ever to have been held to have violated in August a rule that didn’t exist before December. And presumably if the FEC had had enough members to pass this rule in December, the McCain campaign would have then stopped doing whatever it is that the Times is so indignant about.”

“And WHY does the commission not have enough members to conduct business as usual? The Times is unusually reticent on that point. That’s because the reason the FEC doesn’t have enough members is that Barack Obama has blocked President Bush’s nominee from being confirmed.”

Of course, in the months since I wrote this, McCain’s candidacy has rocketed from moribund irrelevance to electrifying pertinence. It’s been clear to me since summer that, barring some extraordinary scandal, McCain was going to win, and win handsomely, but if I had any doubts they were dispelled by Obama’s politics-as-usual choice of Joe “Mr. Gaffe” Biden (see my post “The Neophyte and the Plagiarist“) as a running mate. And any shadow of an adumbration of a doubt was utterly exploded by McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate–a decision that was easily the most attention-grabbing act by either candidate of the entire campaign. Obama says his nomination marks the moment when the oceans stop rising and the planet began to heal itself, thus providing future satirists with their Dukais moment–McCain picks a running mate who totally galvanizes his supporters and reduces his opponent’s supporters to a state of blithering, often obscene, idiocy.

I am not in the habit offering offering advice to political candidates, but back in July I offered this tactic for the consideration of conservative candidates (It is good advice for conservatives in general, whether or not they are running for office):

Ignore The New York Times. More and more of your constituents are doing so, why shouldn’t you? Join the many happy folks who have Kicked the Times: Don’t read it, don’t refer to it, don’t regard it as an authority on anything. You’ll feel cleaner and your blood pressure will thank you. Above all, do not write, and do not allow your staff to write, op-eds for the Times. On the off chance that the paper actually publishes your piece, you will only help to bolster its sense of smug self-righteousness and perpetuate the illusion that the paper treats the candidates, or the issues, even-handedly. They don’t, and you shouldn’t collude in fostering the destructive myth that they do

I arrived in London early this morning for a conference about libel tourism and other efforts to suppress criticism of radical Islam. Because of the success of those efforts, publicity for the event–which is taking place in a semi-secure, undisclosed location–has been circumscribed. I expect it to be at least as informative and enlightening as the conference on Free Speech in a Age of Jihad that Andrew McCarthy and I organized last spring. The New Criterion published edited versions of the presentations and a selection of responses from the conference in a special pamphlet this summer, and it can be yours (while supplies last) for a modest sum by clicking here and following the directives. Tune in a day or two for a report on the proceedings of the new conference.

Meanwhile, I am happy to see that Sarah Palin has lost none of her fizz in crossing the Atlantic. Gordon Brown has said he wishes his government to maintain a dignified neutrality with respect to the American Presidential election(never mind that he endorsed Obama himself), but it turns out that no one is paying any more attention to him about than than about anything else.

Hazel Blears is not, I’d wager, a name known to many of my readers, but she has the distinction of being the Communities Secretary for Mr. Brown’s government. Speaking at a fringe meeting of the centre-left party at Labour’s annual party conference in Manchester, Ms. Blears described Palin as “horrendous.” And why is that, Hazel?

“I just think there is so much anti-politics — not just in this country but around the world.”

“One of the reasons why Sarah Palin has been such a phenomenon is because she’s anti-politics, anti-Washington.”

Hazel Blears may be wrong when she describes Sarah Palin as “horrendous”–maybe she meant to say, “Dangerous to the prospects of socialistically inclined politicians like me.” But I when it comes to explaining the PP–the Palin Phenomenon–I feel a bit like Henry Higgens listening to Eliza Dootlittle discourse about the rain in Spain. “She’s anti-politics”–more precisely, she’s “anti-politics as usual.” Right you are, Hazel! She’s “anti-Washington.” Right again, Minister! That’s one of the reasons citizens across the country are clustering around the McCain-Palin team. People don’t like politics as usual. They don’t like the big-government Washington establishment. I am gald to see that bureaucrats like Hazel Blears are beginning, however obscurely, to cotton on to this enormous fact.

Joe Biden has been roundly criticized for his remark that paying higher taxes is a “patriotic duty,” at least for the (conveniently undefined) “wealthy.” (He later added that he–speaking as a Catholic--believed paying taxes was also a “religious duty.”)

There is a sense–a limited sense, I hasten to add–that I believe Biden is correct, or, rather, partly correct. To the except that obeying the law can be construed as patriotic, then paying one’s taxes is a patriotic act. But it is no more patriotic when Bill Gates does it than when you or I do it. (Mr. Biden has so amply demonstrated his confusion about religion, above all the Catholic religion, that charity dictates that I leave his statement about taxes and one’s “religious duty” out of account.)

The problem is that Joe Biden wasn’t taking about obeying the law. He was talking about Obama’s egalitarian plan to further the progess of socialism in this country by (among other things) promulgating polices that will redistribute wealth. Latching on the business profits (be they “windfall” profits or any other sort) is thread in this project. Raising income taxes on more prosperous Americans, thereby making them less prosperous, is another.

The power to tax, Chief Justice John Marshall observed at the end of the 18th century, is the power to destroy. Joe Biden–like Barack Obama, like Democrats en bloc–understand, applaud, and wish to arrogate that power to themselves. Obama is the most radical candidate for presidency in my lifetime. He makes McGovern look like Ronald Reagan. His tax policy is one expression of that radicalism. It would impoverish working Americans not just by taking their money from them but also by rendering them more and more dependent upon the state. The goal, as Tocqueville say back in the 1830s, is the goal of democratic despotism: to turn everyone into a ward of the state. That’s the truly objectionable aspect of what Joe Biden said: not that paying taxes, i.e., obeying the law, is a good thing but that your property isn’t really your property: it belongs to the state, to dispose of as it sees fit. We’ve heard that song before, comrade, but it’s not a tune that American ears find pleasing. That’s one reason, incidentally, that I am sticking by by prediction that John McCain will not only win, but will win big, in November. American voters still prefer candidates who understand the difference between what belongs to citizens and what belongs to the state.

Is what happened to Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers now happening to the Obama Campaign? Last January, John Thain, CEO of Merrill Lynch, was part of the upbeat “Yes We Can” chorus, telling investors in a conference call that “We have great, long-term prospects. As I look out into 2008, I am very optimistic about our ability to perform for our shareholders.” It turns out, though, that the oceans of red ink did not stop rising when Obama was nominated. Let’s see, in January 2008, Merrill stock was trading in the low 50s (down from nearly 100 the year before). Now its in the 20s, and this past Monday, swamped by debt, the venerable house of Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America. Turns out there was a hollowness at the center of Mr. Thain’s optimism. Like the city of Oakland according to Gertrude Stein, there was no there there. The promised prosperity was fabricated on empty rhetoric. And when it began to unravel, it unraveled fast.

Sound familiar?

I’d say team Obama is nearing a meltdown. Consider how they are running the campaign. Do we not see signs of desperation? I know that national political contests are not run by Emily Post. Exaggeration. A little name-calling. Accentuate the positive when speaking about yourself, the negative when speaking about your opponent. No one expects impartiality in a political campaign. But even in that rough-and-tumble world, some standards of decency apply–or, rather, should apply. Let’s leave aside yesterday’s revelation that supporters of Obama hacked into Sarah Palin’s private email and published screen shots of some of the contents on the internet–”a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy,” as Rick Davis, McCain-Palin campaign manager said, not to mention “a violation of law.” Let’s look instead at the recent Spanish TV ad from Team Obama. Does it  meet that minimum standard of decency? The Washington Post describes (and contains a link to) the ad:

The Obama campaign has released new radio and TV ads in Spanish that seek to tie Sen. John McCain to anti-immigrant comments made by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The ads also suggest the Republican has “dos caras” — “two faces” — when it comes to his relations with Latino voters. . . .

“They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with, the intolerance,” the television ad’s announcer says in Spanish as a picture of Rush Limbaugh appears onscreen with quotes of him saying, “Mexicans are stupid and unqualified” and “Shut your mouth or get out.”

Never mind that McCain–who teamed up with Ted Kennedy to propose a very liberal immigration reform bill–is miles away from Limbaugh on the question of how do deal with illegal immigration. Focus instead on the shocking  quotations from Limbaugh:

“Mexicans are stupid and unqualified.”

“Shut your mouth or get out.

Not very nice, is it?

But As Jake Tapper at ABC news reports, the ad completely twists Limbaugh’s meaning by tearing the quotations from their original context. In 1993, Tapper notes, Limbaugh went after NAFTA as follows:

“If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine ’cause those are the kinds of jobs NAFTA is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I’m serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do — let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work.”

Hardly the xenophobic expostulation the ad saddled him with, is it?

How about “Shut your mouth or get out”? That, Tapper notes, comes from a critical comment about Mexican law that Limbaugh made in 2006:

“Everybody’s making immigration proposals these days. Let me add mine to the mix. Call it The Limbaugh Laws:

“First: If you immigrate to our country, you have to speak the native language. You have to be a professional or an investor; no unskilled workers allowed. Also, there will be no special bilingual programs in the schools with the Limbaugh Laws. No special ballots for elections. No government business will be conducted in your language. Foreigners will not have the right to vote or hold political office.

“If you’re in our country, you cannot be a burden to taxpayers. You are not entitled to welfare, food stamps, or other government goodies. You can come if you invest here: an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. If not, stay home. But if you want to buy land, it’ll be restricted. No waterfront, for instance. As a foreigner, you must relinquish individual rights to the property.

“And another thing: You don’t have the right to protest. You’re allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our President or his policies. You’re a foreigner: shut your mouth or get out! And if you come here illegally, you’re going to jail.

“You think the Limbaugh Laws are harsh? Well, every one of the laws I just mentioned are actual laws of Mexico today! That’ how the Mexican government handles immigrants to their country. Yet Mexicans come here illegally and protest in our streets!

“How do you say ‘double standard’ in Spanish? How about: ‘No mas!’”

The ad grossly misrepresents McCain’s position on immigration. It scandalously misrepresents what Rush Limbaugh said.

From the very beginning of this campaign, Team Obama has been skirling that McCain has resorted to “lies” and “smear” tactics. As Byron York points out, Exhibit A in the dossier is the ad McCain ran that contended that Obama’s “one accomplishment” in education was supporting “legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex education’ to kindergartners.”

Team Obama decried the ad as “shameful,” “perverse,” just another example of McCain’s mendacity. According to Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, the bill in question was not about sex ed for kindergartners but was “written to protect young children from sexual predators.” The New York Times, Washington Post, and other unofficial members of the committee to elect Obama dutifully parroted this response. But York shows that, notwithstanding the protest from Obama’s handlers, the ad was essentially accurate. The bill in question (the text is here) was introduced in the Illinois Senate in 2003. York quotes a press release that describes the bill: “It teaches students about the advantages of abstinence,” the bill’s main sponsor, Sen. Carol Ronen said, “while also giving them the realistic information they need about the prevention of an unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.” The release, York notes, makes “no mention of sexual predators or inappropriate touching.”

What, specifically, was the bill designed to do? It appears to have had three major purposes:

* The first, as Ronen indicated, was to mandate that information presented in sex-ed classes be “factual,” “medically accurate,” and “objective.”

* The second purpose was to increase the number of children receiving sex education. Illinois’ existing law required the teaching of sex education and AIDS prevention in grades six through twelve. The old law read:

Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades 6 through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention, transmission and spread of AIDS.

Senate Bill 99 struck out grade six, changing it to kindergarten, in addition to making a few other changes in wording. It read:

Each class or course in comprehensive sex education in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.

York proceeds with a meticulous examination of the bill’s contents, quoting copious from those who sponsored and supported it. The bottom line, he concludes, is that “the bill’s intention was to mandate that issues like contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases be included in sex-education classes for children before the sixth grade, and as early as kindergarten. Obama’s defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is.”

Do you know the web site electionprojection.com? I didn’t until a friend sent me a link. It is a fascinating site, full of information and statistics about elections all over the country. Today has been a day of sobering economic news. I am doubly pleased, therefore, to be able to present politically mature readers with this little day brightener from electionprojection:

To see it in context, go here and look right as you scroll down. I assume that the page will be update regularly, so hurry!

Sarah, we thought we knew ye. What a disappointment. Maureen Dowd will have a field day with this.