Today’s Obama “Controversy”

Obama Got Discount Rate On Home Loan

UPDATE: Almost everything I stated here was also stated on the DailyKos homepage, 5-6 hours later. Did they crib from me?  NO!  This is all freaking OBVIOUS!  The Washington Post employees some real morons, or think’s the country is full of real morons.

There are so many things wrong with this hit job by the Washington Post (when was this a ‘liberal’ paper again?).

1. “He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago.” – Should I try explaining the concept of ‘average’ to the writer?  When something is the average (and I am assuming they are referring to the mean of the loan rates) that, by definition, means that some items are above and some are below.
2. “Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors. “The Obamas have since had as much as $3 million invested through Northern Trust,” he said in a statement.” – So there was competition for Obama’s business and the couple has gone on to provide more business to the lender.  Wow, that almost sounds like CAPITALISM!
3. But amid a national housing crisis, news of discounts offered to Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the banking committee, and Kent Conrad (D-N.D) by another lender, Countrywide Financial, has brought new scrutiny to the practice and has resulted in a preliminary Senate ethics committee inquiry into the Dodd and Conrad loans. – Perhaps rightly so, but I don’t see links to specifics on either of those loans.  In the case of this loan it was back in 2005 when everything was hunky-doory in the mortgage world.  Or maybe this Washington Post writer knows something about the mortgage crisis that they should be telling the world?
4. “The real question is: Were congressmen getting unique treatment that others weren’t getting?” associate law professor Adam J. Levitin, a credit specialist at Georgetown University Law Center, said about the Countrywide loans. “Do they do business like that for people who are not congressmen? If they don’t, that’s a problem.” – This is a prime example of applying the same quote to two different situations.  Sure it looks like this professor is talking about Dodd and Konrad but you are supossed to infer that Obama received the same treatment.  BTW, what do you think the future financial prospects of a U.S. Senator are?  Are they pretty darn good?  How about one with a $2.27 million book deal?
5. Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, has no mortgages on properties he owns with his wife, Cindy, who is a multimillionaire.- But HE understands the common man?  Seriously, which one has held a mortgage?  I don’t care how much money you make, having a mortgage is a HUGE deal.  My back-of-the-envelope calcuations put their monthly payment (before taxes and insurance) at $7,500.  That’s real money.  It’s not pretend money or unpaid credit card bills.
6. The Obamas bought the house for $300,000 less than the asking price of $1.95 million, while Rezko’s wife, Rita, bought the neighboring lot for the full asking price of $625,000. Rita Rezko later sold a portion of the undeveloped lot to the Obamas, enlarging the senator’s yard. – Uh oh, I smell another Republican attempt at Whitewater.  I swear, these people think conservative means ‘no new ideas’.

What this all boils down to is convincing the ‘common man’ (read as white, working-class, living in South or Appalachia) that Obama isn’t one of them because he gets things “normal’ people don’t.  Like a great mortgage rate.  Except, to Lenders he isn’t common.  He’s a Senator, he’s rich, and he (and his wife) have significant earnings potential over the next 20+ years.  That is a real A++ loan, not the sub-prime crap we’ve been peddled.  The only thing that makes him different in this way from McCain is that he knows what it is like to get a mortgage and pay on a house each month.  I doubt the daughter of Anhuesher-Busch (or her husband) understands anything the financial situation of the ‘common man’.

Finally, and this might be the most contreversial, I think this is a pattern of race-baiting against the “Uppity Black Man”.  This also resonates with a significant minorty of our nation.  And it is just going to continue until Obama is elected…then it will become less subtle.

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