Matthew 23:24 & Republican Hypocrisy

Let us be careful not to gag at a gnat and swallow a camel. (Matthew 23:24)

I have come to the conclusion that my congressman is naught but a damned fool. I assure you that I do not use that term loosely as one of the worst dressing downs I ever received from my mother involved my calling someone a "fool". Seems that's the eleventh commandment or something; Thou shalt not call anyone a fool. It's prohibited somewhere in the bible, or so my mother fervently believed.

So, to this day I hesitate. Jackass is ok, dumbass-ok, short-bus candidate-ok, and on the right occasion stupid mo-fo works, but calling someone a fool? well that is very serious business. But, sometimes, one just has to squint, spit on the ground and come out with it, "That old boy is just a damned fool!"

Oh yeah! Here's what's going on. My congressman is Jeb Hensarling and he now blames our financial crises on the Community Reinvestment Act. "One can look at the Community Reinvestment Act--very noble in intent, designed to deal with a very serious problem of redlining at the time," he said, "But ultimately it helped put the federal government's seal of approval not so much on helping raise the economic opportunities of the borrower but instead bringing down the lending standards of the lenders." Or so he says on March 9 of this year.

But back in the heyday of subprime lending he spoke from a different side of his mouth, "I need not remind my colleagues that America enjoys the highest rate of home ownership in the history of America," Hensarling ballyhooed on May 24, 2005. "With the advent of subprime lending, countless families have now had their first opportunity to buy a home or perhaps be given a second chance," he went on blathering.

So now those "countless families" i.e. low income or minority borrowers are not the victims of the economic crash, they are the cause of it. By extension that makes only the well-to-do worthy of low interest rates.

Well that is the gnat that's gagging our boy Hensarling. Here are the camels he's wolfed down. An auto industry manufacturing and marketing gas-guzzling behemoths adding to our energy dependence and influencing a foreign policy of invasion and occupation to protect "our" middle east oil, billions poured into the rat hole of the Iraq occupation and "reconstruction", a deregulated wall street and financial institutions rewarding greed and paying bonuses for outright criminality, and insurance oligarchs raping, plundering and pillaging our entire health care system, just to name a few.

Hey Hensarling! Working people, poor people, and disenfrachised Americans of all sorts are not the cause of the economic melt-down. They are the most vulnerable victims of it.

I suspect my mom, were she alive, would agree with me. Jeb Hensarling is naught but a damned fool.