The race in Massachusetts is stunning.  If Democrat Coakley is unable to beat Republican Brown in the bluest of blue states, then any Democrat is vulnerable. Just the fact that this race is close  should be a startling wakeup call to the Democratic party.

It appears that Brown is doing and saying all the right things and Coakley is doing just the opposite. If defeated the party will blame the candidate , and refuse to see it as a referendum on the current administration. Brown is running against Coakley on her statements, her policies, and her record. Brown is being attacked by invoking references to Bush and “tea baggers.”

Last Wednesday the odd at the trading site Intrade had the odds of a Coakley win at 85 to Brown 15, this morning it 53/47; a remarkable shift.

The Democrats have grossly misread their mandate and their hubris has dwarfed even that of the Bush administration. This mismanagement of their party’s victory should be laid squarely at the feet of their leaders, especially Pelosi and Reid. Their first constructive step to clawing their way back from the abyss should be to quickly replace both of them.  It is their hubris, partisanship and arrogance that are putting the nails in Kennedy’s coffin.

This August 2004 Barron’s article by James Bovard castigates Bush for his housing policy.

Read the entire article here.

Excerpts :

ONE OF THE PROUDEST ELEMENTS of President Bush’s “compassionate conservative” agenda has been government financial support to home buyers for down payments. Bush is determined to end the bias against people who want to buy a home but don’t have any money. But he is exposing taxpayers to tens of billions of dollars of possible losses, luring thousands of moderate-income families into bankruptcy, and risking the destruction of entire neighborhoods.

The president is also urging Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to begin making zero down-payment, low-interest loans to low-income Americans. The administration forecast that zero down-payment mortgages could be given to 150,000 home buyers in the first year. Federal Housing Commissioner John Weicher said in January 2004 that “the White House doesn’t think those who can afford the monthly payment but have been unable to save for a down payment should be deprived from owning a home,” National Mortgage News reported. While zero-downpayment mortgages have long been considered profoundly unsafe (especially for borrowers with dubious credit history), Weicher confidently asserted: “We do not anticipate any costs to taxpayers.”

Free down payments carry catastrophic risks. The default rate on mortgages from the largest downpayment-assistance organization, Nehemiah Corp., is 25 times higher than the nationwide mortgage-delinquency rate, according to department of Housing and Urban Development Inspector General. The default rate on Nehemiah mortgages quadrupled between 1999 and 2002, reaching almost 20%.

Millions of American homeowners are at risk of sustaining collateral damage from this debacle. We should recall the role of a similar program launched in 1968 to provide federally insured mortgages to poor people. The result was a disaster, and not just for the poor people who could not actually afford the mortgages they were given. Since most families in the program had almost no equity in their homes, they had nothing to lose if they ran into financial difficulty. It was often cheaper to abandon the houses than to repair them. Neighbors who were not in the program found themselves surrounded by abandoned homes, and their property values — built over years of individual effort, thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance — vanished.

Transferring the risk of homeownership from buyers to taxpayers does not endow virtue in America. Giving people a handout that leads them to financial ruin is wrecking-ball benevolence.

During the last term of George Bush we referred to those who made outlandish accusations against the President as being infected with the “Bush Derangement Syndrome”.  Their hatred seemed so venomous that it was impossible to have any sort of rational conversation about the issues.

I confess that I avoided conversation whenever the Bush bashers used words like Nazi, idiot and liar in the opening comments.  I have long learned though it seems to require reminding that arguing against such parties is a waste of time. No facts or questions of uncertainty will change their opinions.  People make up their minds emotionally and rarely change them. I have found this true as well with many of the mindless  demonizers of  Israel. In conversations it is amazing how little they actually know about the realities of the Middle East.

Few people can be changed by facts. There are so many facts out there that people will simply select the facts that supports their view. They read for confirmation rather than information.   Many accept the basic facts because of an emotional connection with their original source.

That is not to say that there is not an absolute right and wrong or certainty on such issues, but I long to have intelligent conversations with opposing viewpoints without resorting to blinding emotional triggers like ‘Nazis’ and ‘liars’.

But has the heated debate created the Obama Derangement Syndrome?

While some screech pejoratives about Obama, doubt his citizenship credentials, and accuse him of being a closet Muslim; the protest activity centers on his policies.  People are afraid of his health care policies, energy polices, cap and trade and his economic policies.

To the extent that opposition to Obama’s policies makes us dysfunctional perhaps we do give him too much power over our lives.  Perhaps our economy has the power to sustain the assaults of the first six months.

While statements from the fringes pervade Facebook, Twitter and other new and old media; we should look for the area where wisdom prevails.  We should seek ways to make politics irrelevant in our lives.

We should still learn and understand what is happening, and that includes understanding the principles and history beneath the issues.  Our government has been an intrusive problem for a long time and we have learned to accommodate and survive it.  Obama and his party have stepped the up the intrusion of government power significantly, and perhaps we underestimate the ability of our economy to accommodate.

I believe a lot of voters ignored Obama’s history and relationships and felt that even if they were concerned about his promises that he would not be able to get many of them passed.  But with a single party in power the pace has exceeded many expectations.  Yet nothing he has done is contrary to any of his campaign promises.

AS longs as the protests are focused on real issues and real pieces of pending legislation then the noise isn’t  a form of derangement; it is a form of democracy.