Pot calling kettle black on the bail-out

The genesis of the loosened lending standards and defaulted home mortgage loans lies with the liberal Democrats in Congress, who passed legislation directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expand minority and lower income home ownership in the U.S. by easing qualification for loans and financing up to 100% of a home's purchase price.

Almost any good professional banker could tell you that this was a recipe for disaster, before the first loan was ever made. The more of his own money a buyer has in a property, the more committed he is to making the sacrifices necessary to stay with it. Without any of his own money involved, there is no commitment. He sees the home like a rental, that he can easily walk away from, and tens of thousands have.

Additionally, the Clinton administration used Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as sinecures for their friends who needed jobs, elbowing out the professional, knowledgeable lenders who could have prevented the crisis. Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick and James Johnson were up to their elbows in the mess. They also led the lending concerns in making generous political contributions to their friends on Capitol Hill, and the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

The whole system, as it degenerated to the present day, was almost a prescription for disaster.

The massive hypocrisy coming out now in Congress, in lambasting Bush's plan to rescue the system, would be laughable, if it wasn't so tragic. Those who have the least right to say anything, given their votes to create the present system and take campaign money from it, are running the show in Congress.

John McCain is scaring Democrats to death, suspending his campaign and returning to Washington to exercise his role as a Senator and try to craft legislation to solve the problem. Duty to country by putting it first, and politicking second, is totally foreign to the standard Washington modus operandi. Just as with the selection of Sarah Palin, Democrats don't know who to act.

It ought to be an interesting next few days.