The conventional wisdom is that the economic crisis is the reason Sen. Barack Obama is up in the polls.

The conventional wisdom is wrong. Not about Obama being up in the polls, of course, but about why that is so. Obama is up in the polls not because of the economic crisis, but because the reason for the economic crisis, the festering root of it all that has twisted the U.S. financial system beyond recognition, is being ignored in our narrative-creating centers, from the mainstream media to Congress to the White House to the presidential candidates themselves.

Since Obama can only stay up in the polls as long as this all-important reason remains an unspoken, murky kind of secret, I can well understand his obvious inclination to change the subject.

The fact is, if American citizens become too widely acquainted with the fact that race-based social engineering virtually created the sub-prime mortgage industry that has transformed the U.S. economy into The Titanic, Obama will sink in the polls. That's because race-based social engineering is what Obama both advanced as a so-called community organizer, and later funded as an official of Chicago's Woods Fund, where he served alongside unrepentant terrorist and political ally William Ayers -- another phantom political fact citizens now pondering their presidential votes are not supposed to consider.

But I digress. The question is, how exactly did the government overlay of race-based goals onto the real estate marketplace help create the sub-prime mortgage industry, which, having imploded, triggered the current economic crisis, and what did Obama have to do with it?

The answer goes back to one of those totalitarian drawing boards where social engineers draft their human havoc. Not "enough" minorities owned homes, the social engineers decided, because not "enough" minorities were eligible for mortgages, the social engineers concluded. Therefore, in the bean-counting name of what "should" be, the social engineers effectively junked all bottom-line, non-racial markers of mortgage eligibility, from steady employment and clean credit to the all-important down payment, that banks have traditionally relied on to determine the difference between a good and a bad credit risk. This paved the way for increasingly unconventional "sub prime" loans for all (including rubber-check-writing deadbeats, speculators and novices-in-over-their-heads of all races). The social engineers claimed victory for what they called "affordable housing" -- which also paradoxically created a vast market of extremely unaffordable housing -- but it was just a house of card!

s. The real estate bubble popped, the bad loans came crashing down, and the world markets came tumbling after.

Back in the early 1990s, however, it was all still coming together. Writing in the New York Post, Stanley Kurtz described some of the techniques community organizers use to intimidate banks into making bad loans: "In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes -- and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers."

He continued: "In other words, community organizers help to undermine the U.S. economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it."

Kurtz went on to detail the nature of that training and funding in concert with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now), an essential component in the drive to force banks "kicking and screaming" as Madeline Talbott, one of Obama's close ACORN associates put it, into the risky loan business. At one point, Kurtz reported, "Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks."

Will America elect someone this far left wing to take charge of the Federal Reserve Bank? Terrifying thought. To be sure, it wasn't just community shakedown artists who brought our current crisis about. They had massive help along the way, as "affirmative action lending" practices were foisted on the banking industry at the national level, particularly during the presidencies of Carter, Clinton and, yes, George W. Bush. These lending practices were further institutionalized once government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under the astronomically well-paid leadership of Fannie CEO James A. Johnson, began snapping up high-risk loans and repackaging them for sale on the world market. Johnson, whom Obama, of course, chose to lead his vice-presidential selection committee (until financial shenanigans over a sweetheart housing loan forced him out) even set a goal for Fannie Mae to buy up $1 trillion in low-income loans to ensure that, as CNSNews.com quoted him as saying, "ev!

ery American who wants to get a mortgage will have their loan approved."

Well, they did. And it didn't work out so well, did it? Such is the human cost of social engineering, whether on Wall Street, Main Street or Red Square. No wonder Obama doesn't seem to want to discuss the pesky details. "The main thing is to just move away from this hyper-political environment and recognize the house is on fire," he recently said.

That's the main thing? "Let's put out the fire first," he added, "and we can figure out what caused it."

Later, he means. A lot later. Like after Election Day when it's too late to vote for the other guy. Because what voters in their right minds would expect the man who likes to set the fires to put them out?