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Washington Times - Voter-fraud task force raids office backing Obama
A Nevada voter-fraud task force Tuesday raided the state headquarters of a Democrat-allied organization that works to get low-income people to vote, setting off a skirmish over efforts to expand the electorate on behalf of Sen. Barack Obama.
Authorities searched the Las Vegas office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with duplicate and false names, including names of former Dallas Cowboys players.
Bob Walsh, a spokesman for Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat, whose office leads the task force, stressed that ACORN was not charged with a crime but served with a search warrant as part of an ongoing investigation.
"We went in and seized computer equipment and documents," he said.
Republicans accused the Obama campaign of associating with a group known for signing up unqualified voters, and which has been accused of submitting fraudulent or inaccurate voter registrations in Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Wisconsin.
The Obama presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee declined to comment on the raid.
But Bertha Lewis, ACORN's interim chief organizer in Las Vegas, called it a political hit job and said the organization for months had tried in vain to work with Nevada elections officials to identify potentially fraudulent voter applications.
"Today's raid by the secretary of state's office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls," she said.
The Republican Party has long clashed with ACORN, including successfully fighting Democratic efforts to include $20 billion for the group's homeownership program from the $700 billion economic rescue approved last week.
Republicans say the group is a partisan player that engages in unscrupulous election practices. They point to 12 ACORN members convicted of voter fraud in Missouri in 1986 and to the organization's entry into a 2006 consent decree in Washington state to refrain from improper voter registration activities or else face criminal prosecution.
"Our calling it quasi-criminal organization, we don't say that lightly," said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. "When you have your office raided by law enforcement agencies, it is not an indication that you are in compliance with the law."
The Las Vegas office was raided the same day Republicans were complaining about ACORN's activities in northwestern Indiana, where news reports say local elections officials think the group submitted hundreds of bad voter applications.
Voter registration is key to the Democrats' election strategy. First-time voters - especially students and minorities - helped fuel Mr. Obama's primary wins, and his campaign is looking for the same results to capture swing states such as Nevada on Nov. 4.
In the swing state of Pennsylvania, which is a must-win on the electoral map for Mr. Obama, a record 8.6 million have registered for the presidential election with the number of Democratic voters up 13 percent compared with Republican ranks shrinking by 1 percent, according to early totals released by state election officials.
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The day after the 2006 congressional elections Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, asked the Internal Revenue Service to consider suspending ACORN's tax-exempt status. He cited the indictments of four ACORN employees in Kansas City, Mo., on charges they submitted false voter registrations. "Engaging in voter fraud is not a charitable activity," Mr. Grassley said at the time. A Nevada voter-fraud task force Tuesday raided the state headquarters of a Democrat-allied organization that works to get low-income p... more -
CNN: Obama’s lying about William Ayers
Drew Griffin runs down most of the salient points raised by people like Kurtz, David Freddoso, Jerome Corsi, and others. Obama’s admission in a debate that he briefly served on “a board” with Ayers with little contact gets shot down. CNN followed up on Kurtz’ work with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and debunks that notion. They also — amazingly — report on the nature of the grants made by the CAC while Obama ran it to Ayers’ favored schools with radical agendas.
Griffin also tells a somewhat nonplussed Cooper that Obama has lied about his “coming out party” at the home of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in 1995. Obama has said that Alice Palmer arranged the fundraiser and the venue, but Griffin spoke to two people who attended the event, who claim Obama lied. Palmer had nothing to do with that event outside of being invited to it. Obama and Ayers planned the event themselves.
Obama has lied repeatedly about his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist. He spent years working for Ayers, promoting Ayers’ causes. Even CNN won’t buy the Obama line any longer. Expect John McCain to raise this point tonight in the debate. Drew Griffin runs down most of the salient points raised by people like Kurtz, David Freddoso, Jerome Corsi, and others. Obama’s admis... more -
What do Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden have in common? - Yahoo! Answers
What do Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden have in common? They both have friends that Bombed the Pentagon!
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Palin Adds Fannie Mae Execs to List of Objectionable Obama Associates
-- William Ayers isn't the only one of Barack Obama's supporters Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin finds objectionable.
"Now our opponent's campaign is claiming for the first time Barack Obama wasn't aware of Ayers' radical background," the Republican vice-presidential candidate told a crowd of thousands at a rally here, launching a fourth straight day of attacks on Obama over personal associations. "He didn't know he launched own political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist? What's next, claiming he didn't know that two of his biggest supporters were running Fannie Mae? ... Maybe he just thought they were just guys in his Washington neighborhood."
Palin didn't name Franklin Raines or James Johnson, two former Fannie Mae executives who are Obama supporters. But the crowd cheered loudly as she sought to connect Obama to the troubled mortgage company.
Raines is not known to be close to Obama, but Johnson had been a close adviser to the Illinois senator's campaign, even briefly serving on a three-person committee to help select his vice-presidential nominee. Obama and Ayers held one of his earlier meetings before running for state senate in 1995 at Ayers' home, but the two have not spoken in more than a year. Obama's top political adviser, David Axelord, said in a recent interview that Obama did not know of Ayers 1960's involvement in the Weather Underground when he attended the event at Ayers' home, a remark Palin ridiculed.
At the rally along the St. John's River here, with a crowd occasionally interrupting her with chants of "Nobama!" or "Sarah!", Palin accused Obama of looking to "exploit" the current economic crisis.
"For a campaign that says it's all about the future, our opponents spend a lot of time talking about the past," she said. "They look to the past because that's where you find blame. We look to the future because that's where you find solutions."
In vague terms, she outlined some of her running mate's proposals on economic issues: freezing increases in most spending on domestic programs to balance the federal budget, cutting funding for earmarks and expanding the use of alternative energy sources.
But much of her rhetoric, like McCain's, was about character.
"Tonight it's town hall time," she said, referring to the debate between Obama and McCain in Nashville. "We'll see the difference between a man who puts his faith in government and a leader who puts his faith in you.... A politician who observes and analyzes us and a leader who knows and understands us.... The difference between a guy who makes promises and a guy who gets things done."
While Obama and McCain have occasionally had days on the campaign trail in the recent weeks with only one or two events, the GOP vice presidential nominee had a packed Tuesday schedule, with a speech and a fundraiser here, a rally in Pensacola, Fla., and then a speech in Greenville, N.C. She also did an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, who was cheered loudly as she walked into the Jacksonville rally with the press. -- William Ayers isn't the only one of Barack Obama's supporters Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin finds objectionable. ... more -
Barney Frank's Bankrupt Ideas
Financial Rescue: Democrats created the mortgage crisis by forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn't afford them. Now Obama and Biden want bankruptcy judges to bail out the same deadbeat homeowners. And once again, Barney Frank is helping.
It's been said that history is a lie agreed upon. Democrats are trying to rewrite history by blaming the Bush administration for the current crisis and claiming that the rescue bill is necessary to save the economy from Republican mismanagement.
Last Thursday on Fox News, when Bill O'Reilly tried to suggest that both parties might share the blame, House Finance Committee Chairman Frank, in a not atypical meltdown, disowned any responsibility for his lack of oversight over the last two years and his complicity before that.
Frank also claimed: "The fact is, it was 1994 that we passed a bill to tell the Fed to stop the subprime lending. We tried to get them to do it." In other words, those rascally Republicans did it all when they took control of Congress that November.
The legislation he spoke of was the Homeowners Equity Protection Act. It was supposed to empower the Federal Reserve to set the rules on mortgages. Problem was, the Clinton administration had its own ideas of what the rules should be.
The Community Reinvestment Act, first passed in 1977 under Jimmy Carter, was intended to increase minority homeownership. It grew out of charges that banks were "redlining" entire inner-city neighborhoods as bad credit risks. Banks now were forced to perform outreach to these areas.
Creditworthiness and due diligence no longer mattered. As a 1999 New York Times editorial observed: "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Bill Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low- and moderate-income people and felt pressure to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."
On Sept. 11, 2003, the Bush administration proposed to Congress a new agency under the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie and Freddie. The new agency would have had the authority to set capital-reserve requirements, veto new lines of business and determine whether the two quasi-government lenders were adequately managing the risk of their ballooning portfolios.
In the vice presidential debate, Sen. Joe Biden said that "what we should be doing now — and Barack Obama and I support it — we should be allowing bankruptcy courts to be able to re-adjust not just the interest rate you're paying on your mortgage to be able to stay in your home, but be able to adjust the principal that you owe, the principal you owe."
To get this bill passed, Obama made a lot of phone calls — particularly to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including caucus chief Rep. James Clyburn — assuring this would happen.
Those paying their mortgages on time don't get that break.
Rep. Elijah Cummings said Obama told him that, if elected president, he would direct a Treasury Department official to work with homeowners in foreclosure to restructure their loans. Cummings said Obama also told him he'd seek changes in bankruptcy laws allowing judges to reduce what borrowers owe on their home loans.
It describes somebody called a "Federal property manager" who "holds, owns or controls mortgages, mortgage-backed securities, and other assets secured by residential real estate."
Not only is Uncle Sam now the world's largest landlord. He can also arbitrarily set the value of property and the amount owed on it at will, thus distorting the free market.
The vast majority of homeowners who pay their mortgages on time get the shaft. They're the ones who'll take up the others' slack.
Why? And why is the Community Reinvestment Act still law? Financial Rescue: Democrats created the mortgage crisis by forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn't afford them. Now Ob... more -
The Real Obama Thomas Sowell
Critics of Senator Barack Obama make a strategic mistake when they talk about his "past associations." That just gives his many defenders in the media an opportunity to counter-attack against "guilt by association."
We all have associations, whether at the office, in our neighborhood or in various recreational activities. Most of us neither know nor care what our associates believe or say about politics.
Associations are very different from alliances. Allies are not just people who happen to be where you are or who happen to be doing the same things you do. You choose allies deliberately for a reason. The kind of allies you choose says something about you.
Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers and Antoin Rezko are not just people who happened to be at the same place at the same time as Barack Obama. They are people with whom he chose to ally himself for years, and with some of whom some serious money changed hands.
Some gave political support, and some gave financial support, to Obama's election campaigns, and Obama in turn contributed either his own money or the taxpayers' money to some of them. That is a familiar political alliance-- but an alliance is not just an "association" from being at the same place at the same time.
Obama could have allied himself with all sorts of other people. But, time and again, he allied himself with people who openly expressed their hatred of America. No amount of flags on his campaign platforms this election year can change that.
Unfortunately, all that most people know about Barack Obama is his own rhetoric and that of his critics. Moreover, some of his more irresponsible critics have made wild accusations-- that he is not an American citizen or that he is a Muslim, for example.
All that such false charges do is discredit Obama's critics in general. Fortunately, there is a documented, factual account of what Barack Obama has actually been doing over the years, as distinguished from what he has been saying during this election campaign, in a new best-selling book.
That book is titled "The Case Against Barack Obama" by David Freddoso. He starts off in the introduction by repudiating those critics of Obama who "have been content merely to slander him-- to claim falsely that he refuses to salute the U.S. flag or was sworn into office on a Koran, or that he was born in a foreign country."
Barack Obama's being the first serious black candidate for President of the United States is what most people consider remarkable but how he got there is at least equally surprising.
The story of Obama's political career is not a pretty story. He won his first political victory by being the only candidate on the ballot-- after hiring someone skilled at disqualifying the signers of opposing candidates' petitions, on whatever technicality he could come up with.
Despite his words today about "change" and "cleaning up the mess in Washington," Obama was not on the side of reformers who were trying to change the status quo of corrupt, machine politics in Chicago and clean up the mess there. Obama came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates.
Senator Obama is running on an image that is directly the opposite of what he has been doing for two decades. His escapes from his past have been as remarkable as the great escapes of Houdini.
Why much of the public and the media have been so mesmerized by the words and the image of Obama, and so little interested in learning about the factual reality, was perhaps best explained by an official of the Democratic Party: "People don't come to Obama for what he's done, they come because of what they hope he can be."
David Freddoso's book should be read by those people who want to know what the facts are. But neither this book nor anything else is likely to change the minds of Obama's true believers, who have made up their minds and don't want to be confused by the facts. Critics of Senator Barack Obama make a strategic mistake when they talk about his "past associations." That just gives his m... more -
Bailout, Zeitgeist movie, US elections and connecting all the dots together
Tools so any person that has owes money to the bank or credit card institutions to bring their cases to the courts thus protecting from any foreclosure and lost of any asset you have. Plus, only 3% of the money is tangible (bills and coins), all the rest are mere numbes on a computer screen. Meaning, all the money doesn't exist. Tools so any person that has owes money to the bank or credit card institutions to bring their cases to the courts thus protecting fro... more
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Barney Frank’s Homosexual Lover, Herb Moses, Was a Senior Executive at Fannie Mae
Chairman of the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, is responsible for oversight of the US mortgage markets administered by government created entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Barney’s partner and lover, Herb Moses was a senior executive at Fannie Mae:
“C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?” A GOP aide told FOX News. “No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws.”
Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay member of Congress. “I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus,” Moses wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. “On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover.” According to National Mortgage News, Moses “helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.”
Of course, such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector and putting the country on the brink of financial meltdown. Chairman of the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, is responsible for oversight of the US mortgag... more -
Barney Frank was hands on with Fannie Mae Executive double Standard wow
So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.
Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.
Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.
"It’s absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?
"If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. "But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard." So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions. ... more -
In Heat Barney Frank has love affair with Fannie Mae worker
In the 1990's, Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae may have been a serious conflict of interest because his lover, Herb Moses, was an executive for Fannie Mae at the time Frank's was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie Mae.
Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.
So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.
Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.
Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.
"It’s absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?
"If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. "But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard."
Read the whole thing. There needs to be some serious investigations on this matter.
No wonder Bill Clinton said "I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." In the 1990's, Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae may have been a serious conflict of interest because his lover, He... more -
Media Mum on Barney Frank's Fannie Mae Love Connection
Are journalists playing favorites with some of the key political figures involved with regulatory oversight of U.S. financial markets?
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews launched several vitriolic attacks on the Republican Party on his Sept. 17, 2008, show, suggesting blame for Wall Street problems should be focused in a partisan way. However, he and other media have failed to thoroughly examine the Democratic side of the blame game.
Prominent Democrats ran Fannie Mae, the same government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that donated campaign cash to top Democrats. And one of Fannie Mae’s main defenders in the House – Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., a recipient of more than $40,000 in campaign donations from Fannie since 1989 – was once romantically involved with a Fannie Mae executive.
The media coverage of Frank’s coziness with Fannie Mae and his pro-Fannie Mae stances has been lacking. Of the eight appearances Frank made on the three broadcasts networks between Jan. 1, 2008, and Sept. 21, 2008, none of his comments dealt with the potential conflicts of interest. Only six of the appearances dealt with the economy in general and two of those appearances, including an April 6, 2008 appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” were about his opposition to a manned mission to Mars.
Frank has argued that family life “should be fair game for campaign discussion,” wrote the Associated Press on Sept. 2. The comment was in reference to GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. “They’re the ones that made an issue of her family,” the Massachusetts Democrat said to the AP.
The news media have covered the relationship in the past, but there have been no mentions since 2005, according to Nexis and despite the collapse of Fannie Mae. The July 3, 1998, Reliable Source column in The Washington Post reported Frank, who is openly gay, had a relationship with Herb Moses, an executive for the now-government controlled Fannie Mae. The column revealed the two had split up at the time but also said Frank was referring to Moses as his “spouse.” Another Washington Post report said Frank called Moses his “lover” and that the two were “still friends” after the breakup.
Frank was and remains a stalwart defender of Fannie Mae, which is now under FBI investigation along with its sister organization Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) – all recently participants in government bailouts. But Frank has derailed efforts to regulate the institution, as well as denying it posed any financial risk. Frank’s office has been unresponsive to efforts by the Business & Media Institute to comment on these potential conflicts of interest.
While the relationship reportedly ended 10 years ago, Frank was serving on the House Banking Committee the entire 10 years they were together. The committee is the primary House body which along with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) has jurisdiction over the government-sponsored enterprises. Are journalists playing favorites with some of the key political figures involved with regulatory oversight of U.S. financial markets?... more -
Pressured to Take More Risk, Fannie Reached a Tipping Point
When the mortgage giant Fannie Mae recruited Daniel H. Mudd, he told a friend he wanted to work for an altruistic business. Already a decorated marine and a successful executive, he wanted to be a role model to his four children — just as his father, the television journalist Roger Mudd, had been to him.
Fannie, a government-sponsored company, had long helped Americans get cheaper home loans by serving as a powerful middleman, buying mortgages from lenders and banks and then holding or reselling them to Wall Street investors. This allowed banks to make even more loans — expanding the pool of homeowners and permitting Fannie to ring up handsome profits along the way.
But by the time Mr. Mudd became Fannie’s chief executive in 2004, his company was under siege. Competitors were snatching lucrative parts of its business. Congress was demanding that Mr. Mudd help steer more loans to low-income borrowers. Lenders were threatening to sell directly to Wall Street unless Fannie bought a bigger chunk of their riskiest loans.
So Mr. Mudd made a fateful choice. Disregarding warnings from his managers that lenders were making too many loans that would never be repaid, he steered Fannie into more treacherous corners of the mortgage market, according to executives.
For a time, that decision proved profitable. In the end, it nearly destroyed the company and threatened to drag down the housing market and the economy.
Dozens of interviews, most from people who requested anonymity to avoid legal repercussions, offer an inside account of the critical juncture when Fannie Mae’s new chief executive, under pressure from Wall Street firms, Congress and company shareholders, took additional risks that pushed his company, and, in turn, a large part of the nation’s financial health, to the brink.
Between 2005 and 2008, Fannie purchased or guaranteed at least $270 billion in loans to risky borrowers — more than three times as much as in all its earlier years combined, according to company filings and industry data. When the mortgage giant Fannie Mae recruited Daniel H. Mudd, he told a friend he wanted to work for an altruistic business. Already a ... more -
Bailout, or Blowout? Financial "Rescue" Plan Turns into Mad Spending Spr...
As the United States of America stands on the verge of irrecoverable bankruptcy, U.S. Senators have decided to orchestrate a final "blowout" spending spree by dressing up the financial bailout plan with so much bloated pork that no lawmaker can resist its lure.... As the United States of America stands on the verge of irrecoverable bankruptcy, U.S. Senators have decided to orchestrate a final �... more
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Fannie Mae Forgives Loan for Woman Who Shot Herself
Fannie Mae said it will set aside the loan of a woman who shot herself as sheriff's deputies tried to evict her from her foreclosed home.
Fannie Mae foreclosed on the Akron, Ohio, home of Addie Polk, 90, after acquiring the mortgage in 2007.
Addie Polk, 90, of Akron, Ohio, became a symbol of the nation's home mortgage crisis when she was hospitalized after shooting herself at least twice in the upper body Wednesday afternoon.
On Friday, Fannie Mae spokesman Brian Faith said the mortgage association had decided to halt action against Polk and sign the property "outright" to her.
"We're going to forgive whatever outstanding balance she had on the loan and give her the house," Faith said. "Given the circumstances, we think it's appropriate."
Residents of Akron have rallied behind Polk, who is being treated at Akron General Medical Center. She was listed in critical condition Friday afternoon, according to Akron City Council Fannie Mae said it will set aside the loan of a woman who shot herself as sheriff's deputies tried to evict her from her foreclos... more -
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac execs now offering advice to Obama
Campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made to Barack Obama may backfire if the Democratic presidential hopeful wages an aggressive campaign to cast blame on rival John McCain and the Republicans in Congress for the mortgage-related losses that forced the U.S. Treasury to take over the quasi-governmental mortgage giants.
A review of Federal Election Commission records back to 1989 reveals Obama in his three complete years in the Senate is the second largest recipient of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae campaign contributions, behind only Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the powerful chairman of the Senate banking committee. Dodd was first elected to the Senate in 1980.
According to OpenSecrets.com, from 1989 to 2008, Dodd received $165,400 in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions, including contributions from PACs and individuals, followed by Obama, who received $126,349 in such contributions since being elected to the Senate in 2004.
In contrast, McCain warned of the coming mortgage crisis as he pressed in 2005 for regulatory reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – known as government-sponsored entities or GSEs – and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market," McCain said on the floor of the Senate in 2005, speaking in favor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.
McCain pointed out Fannie Mae's regulator had stated the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The bill passed the House but was never brought up for a vote in the Senate, largely because of Democratic opposition to change in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulatory structure that remained in place until the Treasury takeover two weeks ago.
As evidenced by the failure to pass the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly fought back Republican Party efforts to reform the two mortgage banking giants.
Instead, Democrats in Congress have sought to preserve the quasi-governmental status of the mortgage giants, seeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as places to locate former top Democratic Party operatives, where they have earned millions in compensation, despite a continuing series of financial scandals. Enron-like accounting manipulation, for example, boosted earnings to a level at which massive executive bonuses could be paid.
In the aftermath of the U.S. government takeover, attention has focused on three Democrats with close ties to Obama who served as Fannie Mae executives: Franklin Raines, former Clinton administration budget director; James Johnson, former aide to Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale; and Jamie Gorelick, former Clinton administration deputy attorney general.
All three Obama-related executives earned millions in compensation from Fannie Mae.
Johnson earned $21 million in just his last year serving as Fannie Mae CEO from 1991 to 1998; Raines earned $90 million in his five years as Fannie Mae CEO, from 1999 to 2004; and Gorelick earned an estimated $26 million serving as vice chair of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2003, according to author David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
More at link :) Campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made to Barack Obama may backfire if the Democratic presidential hopeful wages ... more -
US Sends $800 Billion In New Amero Currency To China
A chilling report circulating in the Kremlin today states that the US Secretary of the Treasury has informed the China Development Bank that the US has shipped $800 Billion of a new currency called the Amero, which is to be based upon the merging of the economies of The United States, Mexico and Canada into what is termed as The North American Union. A chilling report circulating in the Kremlin today states that the US Secretary of the Treasury has informed the China Development Ban... more
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biden shot at .................. ..... why was hillary taken down for similiar sto...
Unlike Clinton, Biden Gets Pass for Saying He Was 'Shot At' in Iraq
When Hillary Clinton told a tall tale about "landing under sniper fire" in Bosnia, she was accused of "inflating her war experience" by Barack Obama's campaign -- but the campaign has been silent about Joe Biden telling his own questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
When Hillary Clinton told a tall tale about "landing under sniper fire" in Bosnia, she was accused of "inflating her war experience" by rival Democrat Barack Obama's campaign.
But the campaign has been silent about Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, telling his own questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube last year. "Number one, you take all the troops out - you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
The senior senator from Delaware went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
The rest of the press ignored the flap at the time because Biden was viewed as having little chance of ending up on the Democratic presidential ticket. But even after Biden was selected to be Obama's running mate last month, his claim to have been "shot at" drew no scrutiny from the same reporters who had savaged Clinton for making a similar claim that turned out to be false.
FOX News has been asking the Obama campaign for details of the alleged shooting in Iraq ever since Biden was tapped to be vice president. Biden campaign spokesman David Wade promised an answer last week, but failed to provide one.
Meanwhile, the gaffe-prone Biden has again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones - this time in Afghanistan. Biden said he will grill Republican rival Sarah Palin in Thursday's vice presidential debate about "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Senators Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Biden never explicitly claimed his chopper had been forced down by terrorists. Nonetheless,
John McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Obama-Biden officials have been less than forthcoming about Biden's dramatic war stories.
"They never explained Biden's helicopter story from last week - which is very similar to the story about getting 'shot at' in Baghdad," Rogers said.
Bill Sammon Unlike Clinton, Biden Gets Pass for Saying He Was 'Shot At' in Iraq ... more -
Flashback: Stimulus plan may lead to Fannie and Freddie bailout
Congress is about to sell us the biggest fraud in American history.
Thanks to Congress, junk bond investors will be able to pawn off their bad debt to Fannie and Freddie, instead of suing the big investment houses for ripping them off. This shift will certainly doom Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so don't be surprised if we, the taxpayers, have to bail out poor Fannie and Freddie - to the tune of more than $1 trillion.
But, as the old adage goes, nothing comes for free. As part of the bill, Congress is set to rush through an increase in the mortgage loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and Federal Housing Administration insurance, too) - from $417,000 to $729,750 - the first step toward a massive financial disaster in which taxpayers will end up paying through the nose.
Here's how we got to this point. Domestic and international investors hold hundreds of billions of dollars in bad debt, because U.S. investment houses sold them junk securities based on often fraudulent mortgages. Many of these mortgages were sold to unqualified buyers under terms that made widespread foreclosures a certainty once the housing market began to fall.
Investment banks and bond rating agencies sat down and tried to figure out how to describe Americans with insufficient incomes and little for a down payment as great credit risks on loans too big for their incomes. The new rules focused on credit scores, because it was a good excuse to avoid looking at income and down payment, factors that would have restricted this moneymaking fiasco.
It's been highly touted as an economic stimulus bill that will help millions of Americans - and has the backing of both President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the coming year, individuals would receive rebates of up to $600 and families up to $1,200. There are other goodies, too, including tax write-offs for small businesses and an expansion of the child tax credit. Congress is about to sell us the biggest fraud in American history. ... more -
The ACORN Obama Knows
If you don't know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up. This left-wing group takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers -- you and me -- and has leveraged nearly four decades of government subsidies to fund affiliates that promote the welfare state and undermine capitalism and self-reliance, some of which have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and encouraging voter fraud. A new whistleblower report from the Consumer Rights League claims that Chicago-based ACORN has commingled public tax dollars with political projects.
Who in Washington will fight to ensure that your money isn't being spent on these radical activities?
Don't bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a "community organizer" and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN's political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who "best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about" -- like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money. Let's take a closer look at the ACORN Obama knows.
Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including "Leon Spinks," "Frekkie Magoal" and "Fruto Boy Crispila." Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN's criminal sabotage "an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls." If you don't know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up. This l... more -
Why should anyone trust Joe Biden?
Joseph Robinette Biden – known to all as "Joe" – was once the most talked about American politician in Britain. Unfortunately for the senior Delaware Senator, all the talk was accompanied by incredulous laughter. As part of his Presidential campaign 20 years ago, he lifted verbatim and without attribution Neil Kinnock's celebrated remarks: "Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to a University ... was it because all our predecessors were thick, those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up to play football?"
Biden told an audience at an Iowa fairground: "I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden's the first in his family ever to go to University ... is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright... who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football?"
Note the overt claim to spontaneity at the outset of the plagiarism; but it wasn't just that which left his run for the Presidency buried under an avalanche of ridicule. It rapidly emerged that Biden was not the first member of his family to go to university, and that the closest any ancestral Bidens came to working underground was a grandfather who was a mining engineer – and during the campaign Biden also told a number of gratuitous untruths about his own academic record.
It would be very difficult for a politician in this country to be taken seriously ever again, after such a humiliation; but Americans are a more forgiving people, and so Biden was able to entertain them once again during the current race for the White House. Thus last year he declared that his then rival, Barack Obama, was "not yet ready for the Presidency", which was not a post suitable for "on-the-job training", but graciously acknowledged: " I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man."
Other African-American politicians were hardly amused by the imputation that they were not "clean", and I don't suppose Obama himself was grateful. Still, the Illinois Senator was happy to choose Biden as his vice-presidential running-mate, for several reasons. He is not married to Bill Clinton; he has a strong following among white blue-collar voters, which Obama desperately needs; above all, he is said to have the experience which Obama lacks – he has been a Senator for 36 years and is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
d.lawson@independent.co.uk Joseph Robinette Biden – known to all as "Joe" – was once the most talked about American politician in Britain. Unfortunatel... more
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